[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] BarryH_GEG:
The challenge in dealing with any monolithic company is that there's little consistency in the application of their policies. People have posted incredible acts of goodwill from one region while other regions have a horrific track record of claiming "customer induced damage" where that was clearly not the case. And I've seen it reported in Samsung, HTC, Sony, Asus, and LG forums. All the above companies will screw "X" percent of their customers at some point; either accidentally or intentionally. And most decisions that piss people off here aren't made at the corporate level they are made by a lowly minimally compensated line-level employee. Most likely high on their authority.

When I look at threads on issues I look for trends - quantity, commonality, reasonableness. It's 100% unreasonable to expect every mobile device built to be "perfect." Some percentage will have defects. It's 100% unreasonable to expect a device built to serve the needs of millions to do everything an individual user expects it too perfectly. Manufacturers shoot for the middle. It's 100% unreasonable to expect every issue or defect to be dealt with in a manner the customer finds appropriate. With millions of customer issues being dealt with there's bound to be some bad decisions or undesirable outcomes.

I'm not insensitive to Samsung (or others) releasing defective products, making questionable design decisions, or making bad calls on warranty covered repairs. But the test is what percentage of people are being impacted by those things. With 100MM Galaxy's sold the number of complaints people have with Samsung seem well within a reasonable range; at least to me.

As for the screen cracking issue here's my take so far:

Something is causing some devices to crack when it appears they shouldn't. I'm guessing it’s something to do with how the glass, display, and frame are bonded together that’s putting stress on the display. It could also be as simple as a batch of improperly manufactured AMOLED panels.

The glass surviving and the display cracking isn't a smoking gun pointing to a defect. GG3 is different than previous versions and its thinness (lack of protection) or flexibility may be the reason it survives when exposed to stress and the display beneath it doesn't.

Logic dictates the SGS4 will be weaker than the SGS3 and possibly other phones because it's thinner, lighter, and has a larger display with less bezel. So a higher percentage of cracked displays seems inevitable.

A couple of dozen cracked displays out of million doesn't constitute a crisis. Not to say it couldn't be at some point but it doesn't appear to be now. There's a 62 page thread on the One forum discussing cracked camera lenses. There are fewer actual reports then there are of cracked SGS4 displays. People on the wrong side of a defect are rightfully pissed and emotional about it. So the volume of rhetoric tends to be higher than reports of the actual defect.

A couple of people have posted stories in this thread of bending and dropping their SGS4's with no ill affect. If all of them were as delicate as being portrayed there would be a lot more reports of cracks in this thread and no "hero" stories.

So to sum it up I think there's some SGS4's with defects that are causing their displays to crack when they shouldn't. I do think the SGS4 is more susceptible to stress than other phones. I don't think it's a big deal (yet). And some people are going to be screwed because their display cracked when it shouldn't have and, because it's impossible to separate a defect from customer induced damage, end up paying for a repair they shouldn't have to. And while the latter sucks it's impossible to please every customer who purchases your product. And I'd say the same thing if it were my SGS4 that developed a mysterious screen crack that I had to pay for.

An example of the latter. I had one of the first LG G2X/O2X's released. It had a slew of battery, wireless, and stability issues. The forum(s) were lit up like a Christmas tree. A percentage of people were denying the issues with the typical "mine's perfect" posts. It was pretty clear that there were no perfect G2X/O2X's as the issues weren't limited to s/w and were related to electrical design. I waited for the first update to roll-out and it didn't fix the issues. I abandoned ship losing a fortune in the process. Many hung on until the end making themselves miserable in the process blaming LG, starting petions, filing class action law suits, and posting over and over again how what they were going through "wasn't right." It wasn't right. And I shouldn't have lost money due to LG's incompetence. But life's short and if I'm going to take on a cause it'll be one with more humanitarin implcations than trying to make a conglomerate behave differently. And that's why I'll never buy another LG phone. ;)