[Galaxy S I9000 General] vonchav:
just sent the following to engadget, gizmodo, google, and jame myers (a bell vp)

Hi,

I am writing to report a growing issue with Samsung Galaxy S phone sold by Bell Mobility in Canada. The code name of the model is I9000M and it is branded as Galaxy S Vibrant by Bell.

My Galaxy S experience was much less stellar than what most reviews had indicated. Before going into the discussion of grief, here is a comic relief: Someone has made this analogy - Samsung Galaxy S phone is like a very hot girlfriend who treats you badly and toys with your emotions; and yet, you still want to keep her mostly because she is just so damn hot.

I will go into details momentarily but in essence the issue is that this Galaxy S model fails at startup due to internal SD card not being mounted (a dead phone). This issue is affecting more and more users on a daily basis. I will provide links to some of the forums where users have been reporting the same issue. I am hoping that, by reporting to you the trusted news source, this issue can get a wider coverage and awareness can be raised for current users and potential buyers. And, ultimately, affected users in Canada will get an in-depth answer/analysis and proper support from Samsung and Bell.

Here are a couple of links to the forums where this issue was reported and discussed:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=868569

http://www.samsunggalaxysforum.com/index.php?topic=2377.0

First, in order to give myself some credibility/qualification as a backup to my claims and analysis based on my research, I would like to provide a little bit of my background:

I am a lead developer of a world-class, very successful financial software. I have been designing and writing software for over 15 years. I consider myself very technically savvy.

* The Issue:

I bought the Galaxy S phone late October this year. As aforementioned, my experience with the phone had been frustrating and disappointing. It was always laggy and at times very sluggish.

Last Friday, Bell pushed out the Android 2.2 (Froyo) firmware update. After updating it with Froyo, my phone ran okay on Saturday, although it was already acting up - more occurrences of Force Close, slow loading of applications and frequent reloading of home screen.

Finally, on Sunday, Android Market stopped working so I rebooted my phone. Upon startup, after the Samsung logo/intro, the screen went black and the phone could no longer boot up. Subsequent reboots resulted to the same black screen. By going into recovery mode, it showed that the internal SD card had become corrupted and could not be mounted. This was preventing the Android OS from continuing to load.

Prior to the failure, I have never rooted my phone, applied any lagfix, and used any firmware. I am completely honest on this.

* My Research and Analysis:

First and foremost, let me admit that I am new to the Android platform and my research has been limited so far. However, because of my technical background, I believe my analysis does carry some truth.

For Bell's variant of Galaxy S (Vibrant/I9000M), it has an 16GB internal SD card, built-in and, I believe, soldered on the motherboard. It is my strong belief that the SD card used in this Canadian model is of low quality and defects. Even when I was doing the initial research on the phone prior to my purchase, I had read reports about corrupted internal SD cards. I thought those were just isolated cases and how wrong was I! (I chose Samsung Galaxy S mostly based on the universal glowing reviews on the phone.)

By updating to Froyo, I believe it triggers the SD card issue sooner and in a more direct way, unfortunately.

My research continues. It turns out that the current Android OS relies on an SD card for caching. It seems an SD card is required. Coming from software development myself, I question this requirement. This should have been an option. However highly recommended (for optimization and speed), this shall remain optional.

From what I read, Samsung implemented the low-level I/O interface to SD cards. This also shocked me if it is true. Why would Google allow a third-party hardware manufacturer to implement such a core component of Android? I would not completely trust a non-software-centric company to build software.

Samsung's implementation was to use a very old (possibly obsolete) file system called RFS to manage I/O calls from/to SD cards. According to tests/debugging conducted by other Android developers, this RFS implementation is faulty and creates a lot of I/O errors. Because of this inferior file system and the huge amount of error logs it writes to the SD cards, the SD card is more prone to wears and breakdowns, which makes the phone a ticking time bomb.

* Summary and Final Thoughts:

This SD card/dead phone issue appears affecting users mostly from Canada, which is the only country issuing the I9000M model. The problem seems to be a result of a combination of faulty SD cards and inferior software implementation.

As a developer, I am deeply disappointed and frustrated with the Android platform. I will not recommend any Android device to anyone as a consumer product. And, from my own experience and due to the fragmentation of the platform, I would not recommend Android to my boss as a viable business platform. My Android experience so far has been very similar to that of Microsoft Windows - Android will be buggy for a long long time and supporting Android devices will be an utter nightmare (just ask any Android developer: how many devices do you have to test with your apps? how many users bad-month your apps because they don't work with a particular device?).