Sorry! Off topic warning!
For months, on twitter,or on support calls outlining the problems with my lemon Samsung Galaxy S Android phone, I have had to repeat all of this,(tough in 140 characters!) I decided to write it – now I can just point to the URL.
I got the Samsung Galaxy S phone last fall, it is has never worked properly. It was sent back to the telco for 1 month service, it has been a little better since then, but definitely not ‘good’. I actively tell people not to buy one. (If Samsung uses Net Promoter Score – ha…)
Here is an outline.
Sending text (SMS) messages to my kids, I could send one – yes 1 , the device then locked up, I needed to remove battery for 15 seconds to reboot it. Send the next text message, and repeat.
I have Bluetooth built into the audio system in my Mercedes, 60 to 70% of calls crashed both the phone, and the Bluetooth system in the car – had to reboot phone, and restart car system. (my previous Blackberry had no problem)
My wife has a new Ford with the voice activated Microsoft Sync system. I tried pairing the phone with her car, the result?
It crashed so badly we had to take the car to the dealer to get the system restored.
Note, other than the default telco apps installed, I had installed the twitter client, and Dropbox. No other 3rd party software. I removed both of them and the issues remained – never have risked trying to pair with my wife’s car again – so no clue if that might be better.
With the default installed mail client for Gmail, reading mail would lock up at least a few times per day – again reset required.
With the phone just in standard ‘stand by’ mode, it would lock up. The problem here was that you could not see that. You could see the screen, but callers went right to voice mail, and no mail or call alerts would show on the screen. After a dozen ‘why aren’t you returning my calls / emails” I just learned to pull the battery every few hours during the day. When it booted up – alerts would show.
I dealt with Telco support through this – they referred me to Samsung, Samsung web site wanted me to update their Kies Synchro software. Only problem there is? I tried installing it on three computers, it never worked – just crashed. As a note – it still does not work. The latest version finally recognizes the phone, but crashes trying to synch.
Finally, at one of the ‘stand by’ lock up episodes, I took the phone to one of the Telco’s local retail outlets. They authorized it to be returned for warranty service. After one month without the phone?
Many of the above were resolved – but?
It still crashes the Bluetooth system in my Mercedes, it is not 60% anymore – maybe 20% or 30%. Still, when it happens, reset required, of the car!!! (Again – I don’t want to risk trying my Wife’s car again)
Periodically (not often) it actually locks up on plain phone calls. Cripes, my ’80′s Motorola brick cell phone never did that.
Alerts on email are hit and miss, the GMail app for my elliotross.ca (Google Apps for domains account) does OK, but the generic email client for my work e-mail (MS Exchange) and my legacy telco web mail account (sympatico.ca) loses the ‘alert’ ability – you need to manually open the app and refresh.
Now lets go to the battery, again, other than Telco default software, I have Tweetdeck (for twitter), Dropbox, and Evernote installed. I have WiFi at home and at the office, to avoid cellular searching.
Yet after full charge, a few short calls to my wife, (photo) battery is in single digit rage by early afternoon. About 5-6 hours. The two calls with pic are cellular, the other two office.
You can see it on the call log – it does not get simpler than “today” and “yesterday” For full size, click here.
The only positive thing since the repair, is that the text and ‘stand by’ crashes have stopped.
And finally, you can justifiably argue that this problem is due to the “open” Android API versus the “Closed” Apple API, the one non Telco app I use regularly is Tweetdeck. It no longer responds, I uninstalled it, pulled the battery, and re-installed after the reset, Same thing. Probably have to give the phone back to Telco to reinstall the Android operating system.
The Takeaway?
At 200 dollars a month – you can guess.
No, I don’t recommend this phone. I won’t even recommend any variant – that includes the Galaxy Tab ‘tablet’ computer.
Not worth the frustration, aggravation and pain. Stay away from them all.
Update August 16 2011
One piece of success, but other results pending. As mentioned, Samsung Kies software has never worked. I did start it up and found an update was available (to version 2.0.2.11071_128) It took almost two days to get it upgraded, but I found out that on my Windows 7 laptop – having ‘Administrator’ privilege, or using the UAE (user account elevation) to ‘Administrator’ does not allow Kies to install properly. You must be logged in as the physical ‘Administrator’ account.
After Kies was updated, I tried to update the Galaxy to the latest firmware version, it crashed. After restarting both phone and laptop, I found that the firmare did seem to update (at least the version number showed 2.3.3) but the phone was unstable. Cellular service still worked, but all data services were dead.
I then did a factory reset – destroying all configurations and data on the phone. I have just finished that task, and will let the phone just sit in “phone” mode for a few days (ie no data, no mail etc)
Update 18 Aug 2011
As previously mentioned, the phone has been in ‘dumb’ mode the last few days – no data – one improvement is definitely battery life. Previously just in ‘stand by’ 5 or 6 hours was in single digit battery life. I have not had many calls, and no data – but still, ‘stand by’ has about 70 % battery life today – and I deliberately have not charged it in the last 18 hours or so.
Update September 9
Phone still crashes bluetooth regularly, phone has crashed twice on just plain phone calls. Battery still needs to be pulled out periodically to recover from crashes, but those could be application related.
Update September 20
I disabled bluetooth on the phone. Crashes pretty much every day. Also determined that some of the other erratic behaviour may be after it crashes the Bluetooth system in the car, until both the car is restarted (not just reset the system) and a battery pull of the phone – all calls after the initial crash is a coin toss on whether it will work.
PS – swomething I never mentioned previously, because it never worked but was not overly important to me – the ‘Voice’ features on this phone have never worked. Supposedly you search, dial etc by voice – but this has never worked.
Oct 08: As of last Thursday this has been going for a year. As per last update, I disabled bluetooth on the phone. It has made a difference in locking up – only locked up on one call since. One problem though, in Ontario it is against the law to drive and use any device that is not voice activated and hands free. And I spend a minimum of 2+ hours per day in the car. (My commute is 1 hour each way- longer if traffic issues) On one occasion I heard the phone ring, ignored it, finally reached home and found a voice mail that I had to return to the office……)
So on Thursday I called Bell Canada support and said we needed to fix this bluetooth thing. The support tech was going to have me call Samsung, but an amazing thing happened. (a lucky one for me) Going into the Settings on the phone to confirm the Android version & other details – locked up the phone twice. Battery yank both times.
So the tech authorized a repair – that is when he checked account details & found that I had been lucky enough to call on its last day of warranty.
That same evening? it lost its ability to connect to my wireless network. I deleted and readded the SSID – no luck – ah well,,,,,
Update October 20: For the last 10 days or so, my phone has been back with Bell for service, they loaned me a device by HTC running a version of Windows Phone – it may not be long enough for a pure statistical analysis, but I can say this loaner phone has not crashed my car blue tooth system once.
Update 25 October: The phone still does not work properly – and I am pretty convinced the Bluetooth chipset is the issue. On the 23rd, there was one call where the the phone did not even ring (you can see pics below) but 3 of 6 Bluetooth calls in the car crashed the phone and the car system again. (see above note where the HTC unit did not crash once!) also – I paired the phone with the Bluetooth on my HP 8540p laptop, it paired successfully, but you cannot actually do anything. The phone ‘folder structure’ is visible – but zero data or files appears. I also spent most of the night looking at a blank screen.
Image one -
1) In this first image (click here for full size image 1) you can see one call outbound from my wife’s phone to me at 5:17 PM, plus two calls outbound from my wife’s phone to me at 5:48 PM
2) But my phone? You will see one single inbound call I received from here at 5:48 PM – the other two calls did not even cause the phone to ring, went right to email. (again click here for full size image 2)
Image 2
The Bluetooth crashing my car is more difficult to make pictures of – sometimes it shows as a missed call, other times there is no sign on the phone at all. But here is a print screen from my computer connected via Bluetooth to the phone – I left the folder ‘ScreenCapture’
Image 3
showing, well – because most of these images were screen captured and in the directory (you can see them via Gallery on the phone) So though the folder is seen as empty via bluetooth, indeed there is data in there. Again click here for image 3 full size.
Update: Nov 03: Last Sunday, the phone would not turn on. The Samsung splash screen starts then sits in an endless loop. Tech support tried ‘hard’ reset of device – same thing – Sent back for 3rd repair attempt.
Update Nov 9: First, I was sent an HTC Incredible Android phone as a loaner during this latest service attempt – Zero bluetooth crashes of my car. One oops has occurred though, My phone is apparently fixed again, I asked for the “Ship To” address to be my office as there is rarely anyone at home during business hours. Bell made a mistake and delivered to the “Bill To” address, not the “Ship to” address. No one was there and it got returned to sender. Took two days to track down the parcel tracking numbers and verify its current location…..
Update Nov 10: Phone was found and delivered this morning. Dead. It still would not boot up. I did a safe mode boot (been on the phone with support for a year! I know how to do that! – power & hold menu button)
Lemon Samsung Phone
It did boot up, made it into phone home screen. After about 10 minutes it rebooted itself and just went back to the locked animation screen. Click here for full sized image.
And to add insult…. phone was returned to me dead on arrival, same issue it was sent for repair still exists, but Bell won’t open another repair order until the loaner phone from the non-repair is returned and processed so that the original repair order gets a ‘closed’ status. I have to then call back and start over again.