[Galaxy S 4 General] nikzDHD:
A device bought in the EU is covered for 2 years.

The key piece of legislation that covers phone warranties, and those on many other devices, is called EU Directive 1999/44/CE. This states that any device sold to a consumer inside the European Union has to carry a warranty from the seller that the device will meet the quality that you would expect for such a device for a period of two years, and in that period any costs incurred in replacing the device are the responsibility of the manufacturer.

It could also be well argued that given the high number of rooted Android devices, rooting isn’t ‘non-normal use’ by any reasonable definition. For those cases that make it to court, the general litmus test is obvious abuse, which, if apparent, would substantiate the seller’s case. That therefore begs the question of whether a court, on seeing the Superuser app installed, would define that as ‘abuse’? Progressing that thinking, how much change can you make before it would be classed as being abusive, and the source of the failure?

I can only think of a few software modifications that you could make to an Android device that could physically damage the phone, and most are those are to do with how the power is regulated and managed. Sure, it’s possible, but statistically millions of phones break without ever having been rooted or even used in a remotely abusive way by their owners.

If it was a legally accepted view that changes void your warranty, then if you downloaded an update, as provided by the phone maker or service provider, and then you applied that and it killed the phone, then you would have no recourse under almost any circumstances. Given the number of updates that phone makers release that they later regret (like Apple), then nobody would ever apply an update again.

It’s also worth noting that in the USA, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (1975) says that to refuse warranty, the company must prove that the problem with phone (or any other device that fails) was the caused by the customer.

Given the poor economics of this scenario, they’re duty-bound to accept your version of events and warranty the device unless you specifically tell them that it was your actions that caused the problem.

Samsung

The internet is full of people who sent phones back to Samsung and then had their warranty rejected out of hand because the phone was ‘rooted’. The line they use to defend this official position is one in its warranty information, which reads, “The warranty is invalidated if the defect is caused (howsoever) by misuse, neglect, and tampering or incorrect adjustment.”

This position seems to get slightly stuck on the ‘caused’ bit, because under EU law they’d have to prove the causality. Some other people have returned a Samsung phone with a custom ROM on it and had it replaced, so there are no guarantees as to how they’ll react or what view they’ll take.

The irony of this intransigent position is that until recently, Samsung employed Steve Kondik (aka ‘Cyanogen’ of CyanogenMod fame) to work for it, indirectly endorsing the modding community.

Full article here: http://www.micromart.co.uk/mobile-phone/649/root-problem-phone-warranties