[AT&T Samsung Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshootin] SprintGalSII:
I made a discovery regarding pictures disappearing and videos becoming permanently corrupt that I find hard to believe, considering the presumed maturity of development (Product Management) on Samsung's Galaxy S4.

Discovery came in a "painful" way, i.e., emotionally - frustratingly - angering

It started when I lost several priceless pictures and videos from my daughter's graduation from the College of Nursing.

On our way home, I decided to move the pictures to a folder, I then deleted some pics and moved the entire folder to the memory card. I uploaded a few to my Onedrive but wanted to wait to get home to transfer the rest because of 4G costs.

Well, when I got home, most of the pictures were gone!!!

I was stumped.But it also explained what may have happened to the pics/vids I took of conversation between my mother and sister when my sister was breathing her last breaths, falling to cancer.

The good news for my daughter's pics is with Onedrive Synching, and WiFi in most places where I've taken photos, I've since retained most of my pictures, but some are gone forever, or so it would seem.

Here's my hypothesis I'd appreciate a response to.

I hypothesize that the cameras, during "capture" write to a temp folder in internal memory, then transfer the photos to either the internal camera folder, or to external "card" if that's how you have the camera set.

That's where the problem is. What if your SD card is bad, as I discovered was the case with mine? You can not write to it.

And here's my accusations against Samsung/google for what I consider to be minimally amateur Product Management/Development Management, at the least, if not injurious and worthy of a law suit by some ambulance chaser.

Based on observation and hypothesis, here are my accusations/analyses, :

AT&T/Samsung/google:

1. Do not allow me access to internal memory any more. The phone is "locked down" and therefore I cannot get to internal memory with undelete software.

2. Did not think through the ramifications of what that would mean in the event of accidental deletion of files, let alone priceless photos and videos, and so their amateur, imbecile brains failed to provide an undelete "button".

3. Do not verify written/moved files, before deletion, when the camera is configured to store images on the external card. They ASSume, rather, they surely were written, and simply delete them from the temporary area.

4. Do not warn me that the external card cannot be written to, and therefore fail at the move function.

laughable amateur stuff!!

Can anyone verify my hypothesis?

I'm further speculating the files remain in the temporary folder, deleted. Is this a correct hypothesis. One reason I believe it is, is because upon inserting an SD, the popup tells you it is configuring the SD for camera, except "burst". Of course, this adds 5. to the list above.

5. Do not test to then warn me, by simply writing a quick file to the card, that the card cannot be written to.

So when you shoot vids and photos, you can review them for a few minutes, then they "magically" "mysteriously" disappear (pics), or become corrupt (vids). I uploaded a video of a dolphin jumping fully out of the water to my facebook last week, I then went to show it to my daughter and it was gone, except it was on facebook,, in very poor quality.

Can anyone tell me where the temp folder it is? Is it accessible without "root" ing?

Will "root" ing format it?

I found a utility that can recover even after a format. Has anyone tried any of those after "root" ing?