[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] shaneveeg:
Those are the only relevant details from my ticket. I don't want to post exact times just because I don't want to draw any specific attention from Samsung in this forum. Though I'm sure I posted enough already to get them confident if not certain about which customer I am.

I still haven't decided on if I want to pay for repair or fight with them more. Either way I think it's going up on ebay when I get it back. I don't want to fell like I have to baby it the next two years and still possibly have to deal with this again.

The phone was nice to use compared with my 3 year old Droid, but so are many other, actually durable phones.

---------- Post added at 05:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:28 PM ----------

No, the US market for phones is quite different than most other countries I think. Here we can buy the phone unlocked for about $600 - $700, or most commonly we can get it for $100 - $200 with a 2 year contract where we pay about $80 - $120 a month for voice and data service. So the phone companies make the phones seem cheap and then collect about $2400 from the users for a service that they provide for MUCH less cost.

It's not quite a monopoly problem in the US with the carriers at this time, but it's pretty close. I think there are 3 major providers. They all charge a lot. And new smaller companies that would want to challenge them don't have much chance because of the way the radio spectrum and licensing is handled. The small companies usually have to rent the service from the bigger ones and then resell it. So the cost is still high.

As long as there are no better options and consumers are willing to pay this much, that's the business model we get. I bought a phone for $200 out of pocket 90 days ago, and now I am stuck with a contract for $1800 or so because I saved $400...

that said, they are doing better about rolling out plans for unsubsidized phones.

---------- Post added at 06:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:47 PM ----------

This video was being called a response to all the claims of durability problems Samsung was having in the past.

It shows some pretty rough treatments, and the phones pass all of them! Well, at least the video clips they used for the video showed the ones that passed...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4f9gQ7b6Gg

The heat test showed it getting hot enough to melt butter (probably soft margarine actually based on the package). That's not exactly impressive since butter has a melting point of under 95 F, 35 C. Margarine can be made to melt higher or lower, but not much. Basically this shows that the phone can survive being slowly heated to almost as warm as my body temperature and still work. If those are the standards they are trying to meet, I'd say they succeeded.

The drop test showed the phone landing on the edge banding and bouncing a bit. Again, undamaged. But how many did they test that were damaged that way? Just like here, it's clear that the phone can survive a drop quite often. It's all about how exactly it hits when it lands. What's important is how often it won't survive. Some phones do much better than others.

I didn't see a flex test in the video. Maybe they didn't want to show that test and then have people try it on their own since it's so easy to do and seems harmless enough.

I do believe they test these products quite a bit. I am sure they have statistics on how many failed in their tests and predictions on how many will fail in consumer use. The questions then becomes one of what the acceptable numbers are for them and how they will handle the failures.

As for this video, perhaps a bit of propaganda. PR driven for sure. I'd feel better if the video showed the phone actually breaking some of the time, and then some numbers on how much it took to break it.

If they would publish the actual lab results of all their durability testing, that would be pretty incredible. It would be hard to not respect a company that was willing to tell the world exactly what the weaknesses of the product were, and how they were working to fix them.

At this point I still quite like Samsung. But I'm having doubts.

As a side note I recently bought a Samsung Fridge, Range, and Microwave set. Beautiful appliances and great functionality. I haven't installed the Micro yet, but the range has a broken heat sensor after 1 day of use, (being fixed no charge) and the freezer door of the fridge sometimes feels like it closed all the way, but didn't. So we have to be careful with it every time. Everything has problems to some degree. But it's really about seriousness and the frequency of them. Ideally these things get worked out and really solid products are the result. Samsung seems to be on a path of such rapid innovation that they are not able to work out the bugs before the next new design.