[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] haslamjd:
SIM and SD Card Errors From Carrying Cellphone in Pocket!

Well, I carried my Samsung Galaxy S4 in my back pocket, and it lead to apparent damage to the internal boards. When you sit down with the phone in your back pocket (or any other pocket I would guess) it applies a lot of torque to your cell phone's body. The S4 body is mostly plastic, which allows even more twisting and bending of the cell phone, although minimal.

SIM and SD Card Error:s

From carrying the cell phone in my back pocket, the phone started to report that the SIM card, and at other times the SD card, was not inserted or had gone bad. My SIM card was indeed installed in the phone properly, and I tested it in another phone is it worked just fine. I also can install my SD card into my PC and read the contents just fine. That leaves something wrong with either the software or the hardware of the S4 phone.

Testing

After weeks of testing different possibilities with the S4 phone, my findings were that every time I carried the phone in a place that allowed the phone body to undergo twisting or bending stress, I would get the SIM card errors and the SD errors. However, if I carried the phone in my hand, or left it on a solid flat surface, I could not get the phone to show me either errors...not one time! I guess it doesn't take much to cause these errors to happen, because I would think that the glass would be the first to break with any stress to the phone body, but apparently the internal parts are even more fragile and thereby poorly designed.

Conclusion:

Poor design and weak materials used in the Samsung S4 cell phone that causes damage to the internal parts that interact with the SIM and SD cards (since they are both inserted into the same part). I am still trying to determine if the solder connections break, or if the card holders "warp" under pressure and lose temporary contact with the SIM or SD card connections. I contacted Samsung, and of course, Samsung denies that there is even an issue with SIM cards not being detected in the S4, and stated to me that "

they have not received any reports to their web site of these card failure issues in the S4 phone

" (I've got the chat text to prove it!). I am also exploring how excessive heat (like when you play back video) might play a part in all this by causing the parts to overheat and expand and lose connectivity. But my experience has been with external stress unintentionally applied to the body frame of the Galaxy S4 cell phone by Samsung.

I believe that most of those people out there that cannot get their SIM or SD cards to work in the S4 may have already done permanent damage to the SIM and SD card holder on their phones. Not because they have done anything direct or by accident to their S4 phone (hey, these phones cost too much for that behavior), but more so because of poor design of the internal parts by the manufacturer. Those lucky ones out there that get the message to restart their phone (probably because of loss of contact to the cards), may have just started the damage process and need to immediately stop carrying their cell phone in tightly restricted areas (like pants pockets) that can cause physical stress to the cell phone's body and internal parts.

Please let me know if you find other issues related to carrying the phone in your pocket and/or of any fixes to this seemingly invisible to Samsung "common design problem" in the Galaxy S4 cell phone. I think together we can find the cause of all this once and for all and perhaps consider a class action law suit against Samsung since they don't seem to want to take responsibility for their poor design error of these highly expensive cell phones.

Call Out to Samsung...

Hey Samsung! No SIM or SD card problem reported in the S4 cell phone! Really? Try searching for "SIM card error in Samsung S4" in your favorite browser and tell me if you still don't think there is a problem out there. Is it that you (Samsung) are either hiding this design flaw and don't want to do a recall to fix your mistake? Or is it that you are just totally blind, deaf and stupid with respect to all your loyal customers problems and concerns with your products? For me the answer is apparent, and you have just lost one of your loyal customers! Any one else with me?