[Galaxy S 4 General] BarryH_GEG:
The GPS issue on the i9000 was embarrassing. The 2G radio issue with the GN should have been caught in testing and wasn't. The Exynos exploit shouldn't have existed. And neither should "sudden death." The copy-and-paste reboot issue is also kind of strange. But, out of 400MM devices they've sold over the past two years what percentage of users were affected? 2/3 of the posts in the sudden death thread on the SGS3 forum are from people afraid of it and up in arms, not people who actually experienced it. I have a N2 and Note 10.1 that could be affected and I'm not worried about it because my chance of being affected is in the single digit percentages. If it happens, I'll get it repaired. I have dozens of friends and co-workers with Samsung devices and not one has experienced sudden death, copy and paste reboots, or been a victim of Exynos exploit hacking. Most of them don't follow forums and don't even know what those things are. Ignorance is bliss. ;)

Anything under a 5% defect rate in mobile electronics is considered "good." That means to be "good" Samsung's allowed 20MM defective devices over the past two years. From forum chatter it appears a lot less than that. Samsung's by no means perfect and there are lots of multi-page issues threads on their device forums but they're better than most. If you want to play the "defect" game let’s talk about the One X Wi-Fi design issue, Xperia S displays yellowing from heat, the O2X/G2X battery circuit issues, and the thermal throttling and QC issues on the N4. So based on number sold vs. number with issues I still stand by Samsung having their s- together. Out of HTC, Sony, LG, and Motorola which do you think put out better h/w and s/w than than Samsung?

---------- Post added at 07:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:09 PM ----------

Hmm. I think the Apple and Samsung scenarios are closer than the HTC scenario.

The multiple Sensation upgrades and One X+ and even the Australia-only One XL 32GB weren’t planned model evolutions as much as mid-course corrections in response to poor sales. I don’t think HTC has enough control over their product line to think multiple iterations out as each evolution is so unaligned with all the previous ones (EG: Desire>Sensation>One X>One) as to appear completely random. Like there's a meeting once a year where everyone gets together and says "let's build a phone!"

For Samsung, i9000>i9100>i9300>i9500 represent true generational movements spec and feature wise that all happened to follow very similar design philosophy. How the design was applied evolved but the core features that drove it (removable back cover, expandable storage, replaceable battery, control placement, proportions) remained the same.

The same could be said for Apple: iPhone>iP3>iP4>iP5. The 3s/4s/5s are mid-cycle updates with uneven application of enhancements but all the “s’s” retained the same physical characteristics of the device they followed. Looking at the difference between the 3 and 3s the hardware upgrades alone were as major as 3s>4 so the 3s could/should have been a “4.”

Samsung’s done some “s’ing” of their one via the i9001 (Galaxy S Plus), i9070 (Galaxy S Advance), i9105 (Galaxy S II Plus), and the supposed SGS3 Plus due out after the SGS4 goes official. So I’d offer that Samsung’s major releases are more like Apple’s non-s releases based on feature and h/w upgrades as well as changes to dimensions and design. Even though we all agree the movement in the latter isn't that big.