[Galaxy S III General] fmtrx:
some thoughts

Video player is activated because the S3 micro usb is not just an ordinary usb. It implements the MHL standard which allows the transmission of Video and Audio signal. This is why the video player starts. Touchwiz initiates the vieo player as soon as power is connected to micro usb. One would say that perhaps it is not needed to start the video player when it simply connected with power, but it should discriminate when the HDMI dongle is connected and only then start the video player. But this is of minor importance. The cause of the HW failure is neither the video player, nor the rest of 30 applications that are running in the background :)

Is the infamous HW revision 1.100 defective? Could be. But we cannot guarrantee that ALL devices with this version will mulfunction. Perhaps only a subset. If you have it replaced with another 1.100 this does not mean that the new one will be faulty as well. I have the 1.100. Taking into account these assumptions here, it is very likely that it will fail. Personally i do not care if it fails. Defects are present even to the most expensive devices. We just have to accept it and avoid strong language to the company. If we should use bad language to Samsung for a manufacturing defect, then one should use 10 times more bad language to Apple for a DESIGN flaw with their antennas which is more serious, to keep justice. And 100 times more bad language for their response: "you should not hold the phone this way with your hands...it looses its signal". I referred to iPhone as one here made a comparison and suggested iphone instead. It is ok, buy the iphone. But be careful the "way" you hold it my friend.

Anyhow what is important here is after sales service. And no one can deny that we have a strong backup of a serious company that will replace it ASAP. Do not panic. Just make backups. This thread was very useful for all of us, opened my eyes to have my back covered. I did backups. Now i just wait. But not in panic. I am enjoying the damn phone. surfing, reading, playing pushing it to its limits :). What makes me laugh out loud is reading some random runts here saying " oh no! I should have bought the iphone/kphone/lphone instead" and some friendly suggestions: "cancel all your orders for S3! It will fail! Buy sth else". This is rubbish. Take it cool, and use the warranty.Let's not be paranoid please. If you like this phone buy it. For God's sake what happened here is a manufacturing defect that affects only a subset of devices. If it affected all devices, believe me we would all know earlier and Samsung would recall all units. Samsung would not jeopardize her image and deny a mass recall. Even prestigious companies such as Mercedes had defects and have done recalls.

Then some people here started blaming the Android version: "look! 85% of the failures happen to 4.1.1, only 15% to 4.0.4". What kind of assumption is that? When you have 4.1.1 INSTALLED at the 85% of devices it is very logical to have more failures reported at this version! We would have news only if we had 1 mil with 4.0.4 and 1 mil at 4.1.1 and people reported deaths when going to 4.1.1 AND only comparing similar period of usage in both versions of Android: If i used 4.0.4 only for one month and then i got the 4.1.1 update and use it till today, common sense says that the bricking will happen at the 4.1.1!. Besides that, it does not make sense to have SW burning the HW. The HW has protective circuits to shut itself off. Gone are the days of the infamous AMD cpus that cought fire when removing the cooler units!

Another thing i read here and do not agree is the tactic that some people here follow: "hmm let's not push the phone, close this app"or "charge it only from USB" "reduce write cycles" (!) etc. This is simply wrong. If there is the slightest possibility of having a model that has the defect, then the most logical approach is to reveal it as soon as possible and have this replaced ASAP. Let's assume that overnight charge wears the components of the phone and this causes the brick effect sooner or later. Then i say: charge it overnight. Every night. Make it suffer from overnight charge. This is the only way to reveal ASAP(under warranty) if the device mulfunctions and have this replaced with non defective unit. Better than reducing the impact of wear and have it bricked at a later stage, that is not covered by warranty. * I never charge overnight simply because there is no need to have her plugged 8 hours when it only needs 2-3 hours to charge. But from now on i will charge her overnight. Till it blows all fuses.I have run an application that shows the temperature, and left it on the plug for a couple of hours at 100% battery level (with PWR out = 0.7A) . Two trials: temperature read 24 & 29 Celsius. And it had ~30 apps in the background (including "killer" video player :p). What would be interesting is to have someone reporting that it gets overheat under these circumstances. Even more interesting, if the particular device of this man/woman gets bricked after a while...

Another thing that i noticed after reading all pages of this thread (yes..ALL), is the current of the charger. Some users reported that their charger produces 1A. Others reported 2A. I have bought the phone on October 15and the charger is 0.7A. It seems that they reduced the current in their chargers? we need confirmation on this. (I can see it clearly coming: 1A would cause damage etc.) Who knows.I just thought to share it with you in case it helps.

* Other details:

RF cal: 2012.6.20

HW Rev: M 1.100

eMMC chip Type: VTU00M

Date 05/2012 fwrev: 0xf1 *

As soon as it gets bricked i will report it here on forum and complete the form in google docs. If my phone survives a period of at least 8 months without dying i will keep you informed as well. I have been using it for ~75 days. Yesterday i upgraded from 4.1.1 to 4.1.2.

My final thought? speculate but do not panic. Enjoy your phones! :)