Note phones have a 3 year lifespan, concerned with Note 8

[Paradroid01]

I would have wanted this issue to occur within the first two years, not shortly after! lol

 

[br77494]

I still have the original Note (on Ice Cream Sandwich) and a Note 4 (on Lollipop). Those phones were great. I use them as back-up devices at this point, but both still work fine with replacement batteries. I unlocked them and switched carriers a few years ago, so I have not recieved updates since. I was a loyal Sammy fan for many years and tolerated the high prices, and touchwiz. Nice phones otherwise, but I'm done. I saved a hundreds of dollars and got a Huawei Mate 9. I've never looked back.

I don't think manufactures deliberately disable their older phones, but they certainly want you buy new devices every 2 years or less. But I believe planned obsolescence is a real thing. And Google is a partner in this with annual Andriod updates. If you keep your device for several years with all the apps updated, eventually the OS will become obsolete and may have difficutly supporting newer apps. A fresh new phone sure looks fast in comparison!

 

[Cary Quinn]

But I believe planned obsolescence is a real thing.

It really is not, at least in the idea that companies plan on having their products break down on a specific date or have some built in universal kill switch.

You don't have to plan for your product to become obsolete, your competition is already planning and trying to make it that way from the moment you release it. And phones get killed everyday just from exposure to real life. If Samsung really want to make the phones obsolete, they would just send out an army of 3 year old kids to play with them.

(Side note: I wonder how many people are trying to replace their phones now in the US after trying to use them to take pictures of the recent eclipse?).

And no-one in their right mind is going to include a disabling piece of tech in their product when every bad hacker and ransomware group in the world would be looking for just such a thing to hold both the company and its customers hostage.

br77494 I hope you are very happy with your Huawei Mate 9. Enjoy it, use it well, and keep it away from small children with sticky fingers.

 

[hummingbirdhill]

My husband and I still use our Note 4s, and I still use my Note 2---and we've never blocked updates on them and have never factrory reset them. In fact, my Note 4 was water damaged in May 2016 but after 3 or 4 days was working fine again

 

[Jedi215]

That's ok. 3 yrs is a good time to get a new one

 

[br77494]

It really is not, at least in the idea that companies plan on having their products break down on a specific date or have some built in universal kill switch.

I don't think they have a kill switch, or would use it if they did. But, with the constant release of and more powerful devices, apps that take advantage of them, better cameras, and new more robust operating systems, our devices essentially become obsolete after 3 to 4 years. They don't last forever. The manufactures know that and plan for it (uhhh, those non-removable batteries)...and they'd really, really love for you to upgrade more freqently :-$ . But, I have an original Note 1 and a Note 4 frozen in time with their older versions of android and updates. They still work when I need them to do less demanding work and serve as an emergency back ups. They just can't keep up with my Mate 9. I can, but I just won't be buying a new phone every year.

 

[flyingkytez]

So, you want people to shut up. So how many dead Notes does it take to make you think there's something wrong?

They have a technical excuse for everything. It's NOT a major problem but there are a percentage of people that experienced it. Just because you've never experienced it doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist and then try to debunk the "myth" with your research. Maybe stop explaining and defending and understand it's an issue some people faced, though your phone right now works fine, cool, but there are people's phone that is about to be trashed due to a silly OS update. I have a close friend that is the biggest Note 4 fan ever, yet alone Samsung.

 

[Aquila]

They have a technical excuse for everything. It's NOT a major problem but there are a percentage of people that experienced it. Just because you've never experienced it doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist and then try to debunk the "myth" with your research. Maybe stop explaining and defending and understand it's an issue some people faced, though your phone right now works fine, cool, but there are people's phone that is about to be trashed due to a silly OS update. I have a close friend that is the biggest Note 4 fan ever, yet alone Samsung.

The fact that it isn't widespread means that it isn't the problem that you're making up. That's simple logic. It's difficult for some of us to understand why the tin foil hat isn't coming off when it's faced with facts that disprove the hypothesis.

We can feel sympathy for the situation that a couple individuals are in without creating a super complex and entirely nonsensical story about how he's the victim of some sinister plot.
It is a myth, it is irrational, it is easily debunkable, it is completely ridiculous.

 

[chanchan05]

They have a technical excuse for everything. It's NOT a major problem but there are a percentage of people that experienced it. Just because you've never experienced it doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist and then try to debunk the "myth" with your research. Maybe stop explaining and defending and understand it's an issue some people faced, though your phone right now works fine, cool, but there are people's phone that is about to be trashed due to a silly OS update. I have a close friend that is the biggest Note 4 fan ever, yet alone Samsung.

And just because some people you know had the bad luck of experiencing an error after an update means there is any truth to that myth. Especially since the code being registered is a hardware failure. If there was indeed simply a software trigger, every builder of custom ROMs in the world is on Samsung's payroll then, because they'd have found it within days of the phone's release as they decompile the Android files in the phone to build the custom ROM. These guys alter the software to the kernel level.

I once had a hard drive go mechanical failure right after I ripped a DVD of UP into it. Should I blame Disney for putting some sort of anti ripping softwate into their DVD?

Conspiracy theories like this can be debunked by the mere fact that to make these theories true, it would cost Samsung much more to maintain planned obsolecense than just making a new better phone every year that would hit the human psychological weakness of shiny new things. Why would Samsung spend more than it can earn?

 

[Paradroid01]

Even if you don't believe in these so called conspiracy theories, the planned obsolescence is already here: carrier contracts, choice of fragile materials, non removable batteries, limited and limiting software updates, yearly phone releases etc. The worst thing is: people accept this without even starting to think.

 

[Aquila]

Even if you don't believe in these so called conspiracy theories, the planned obsolescence is already here: carrier contracts, choice of fragile materials, non removable batteries, limited and limiting software updates, yearly phone releases etc. The worst thing is: people accept this without even starting to think.

No the worse thing, by far, is people inventing wild stories to explain away events that are perfectly reasonably explained without the need for tall tales and hyperbole.

 

[Paradroid01]

No the worse thing, by far, is people inventing wild stories to explain away events that are perfectly reasonably explained without the need for tall tales and hyperbole.

Who is this guy who was sentenced to five years in jail btw?

 

[Aquila]

Who is this guy who was sentenced to five years in jail btw?

Are we about to be introduced to your red herring?

 

[B Hoste]

I gave my son my Note 4 when I got the s8+ and it is still working great. Just checked and everything is up to date too.

 

[flyingkytez]

Some guy found a temp fix for this!!

https://forums.androidcentral.com/s...c-problem-how-long-will-live.html#post5954651

Doesn't make sense, if it was hardware related, why does it work now after he did some modding on his own? Still stand with my original statement...

 

[chanchan05]

Some guy found a temp fix for this!!

https://forums.androidcentral.com/s...c-problem-how-long-will-live.html#post5954651

Doesn't make sense, if it was hardware related, why does it work now after he did some modding on his own? Still stand with my original statement...

Because the emmc is a flash memory, not a mechanical memory like normal HDD. So it doesn't completely fail in one go.

This is most apparent in failing memory cards. I've had 2 fail on me, and over 10 years of mobile phone forum participation has shown me the usual symptoms. Generally the phones goes a bit slower than it used to, then there are times with software glitching when trying to access the card, especially from a sleep state. One of my secondary phones, a Galaxy V for work, had the symptom of the icons of apps transferred to memory card suddenly becoming greed droids and telling me the app was inaccessible after waking the device up from sleep. And it would be fixed by a reboot.

In the situation given above, it was described that when he does manage to turn it on, it works until it is placed into sleep where the emmc fail starts. This is because the initial power burst from turning in jolts the emmc to wake up. However once it holds a steady low power state, it becomes unable to wake up due to inherent issues. In that case the most likely reason for the failure to read/write is the connection between the emmc module and the mother board. Could be some wear on the gold connectors. Kind of similar to having the need for some old cables to be folded in a specific way for it to work. An ideal example would be an old cable that when you initially use it to connect to a PC, it works, but after a while it suddenly doesn't allow the phone to be detected, and you'd need to unplug/plug, or play with how it's folded.

In an ideal world where the emmc would not be soldered to the board, you could replace this like replacing RAM on a PC. The solution of keeping a wakelock on it is working as a temporary patch up wherein the worn connectors are kept hot and connected by continuous energy flow taking advantage of the module being jolt awake by initial power surge.

However I could give his solution about a possible additional of one year of use before it finally breaks down, as long as the device isn't regularly turned on and off a lot. That's just off the top of my head. You generally see failure symptoms on flash memory go on for months before they becomes actually unreadable no matter what you do. Sometimes, even if a card becomes unreadable on a cellphone, due to the higher power state in a computer, it will still be read on a PC.

It's all about the power state of the phone.

The only possible explanation I can have for possibly laying it on the Samsung update is that thr update featured improvements on sleep power management like Doze or something similar. If you have a failing memory module, the only way to keep it open is to have always a high power flow into it. However Doze and other similar power saving tricks decrease the flow to certain components, including the emmc module to save power. This is similar to the standby state on laptops where the HDD spinning is turned off after half an hour. This introduction of better power management works fine on phones with new or still viable memory. But if your emmc module is already failing before you got this update, then it contributes to it. So in essence an update may have triggered the final demise, but it's already dying before it happened.

 

[flyingkytez]

Because the emmc is a flash memory, not a mechanical memory like normal HDD. So it doesn't completely fail in one go.

This is most apparent in failing memory cards. I've had 2 fail on me, and over 10 years of mobile phone forum participation has shown me the usual symptoms. Generally the phones goes a bit slower than it used to, then there are times with software glitching when trying to access the card, especially from a sleep state. One of my secondary phones, a Galaxy V for work, had the symptom of the icons of apps transferred to memory card suddenly becoming greed droids and telling me the app was inaccessible after waking the device up from sleep. And it would be fixed by a reboot.

In the situation given above, it was described that when he does manage to turn it on, it works until it is placed into sleep where the emmc fail starts. This is because the initial power burst from turning in jolts the emmc to wake up. However once it holds a steady low power state, it becomes unable to wake up due to inherent issues. In that case the most likely reason for the failure to read/write is the connection between the emmc module and the mother board. Could be some wear on the gold connectors. Kind of similar to having the need for some old cables to be folded in a specific way for it to work. An ideal example would be an old cable that when you initially use it to connect to a PC, it works, but after a while it suddenly doesn't allow the phone to be detected, and you'd need to unplug/plug, or play with how it's folded.

In an ideal world where the emmc would not be soldered to the board, you could replace this like replacing RAM on a PC. The solution of keeping a wakelock on it is working as a temporary patch up wherein the worn connectors are kept hot and connected by continuous energy flow taking advantage of the module being jolt awake by initial power surge.

However I could give his solution about a possible additional of one year of use before it finally breaks down, as long as the device isn't regularly turned on and off a lot. That's just off the top of my head. You generally see failure symptoms on flash memory go on for months before they becomes actually unreadable no matter what you do. Sometimes, even if a card becomes unreadable on a cellphone, due to the higher power state in a computer, it will still be read on a PC.

It's all about the power state of the phone.

The only possible explanation I can have for possibly laying it on the Samsung update is that thr update featured improvements on sleep power management like Doze or something similar. If you have a failing memory module, the only way to keep it open is to have always a high power flow into it. However Doze and other similar power saving tricks decrease the flow to certain components, including the emmc module to save power. This is similar to the standby state on laptops where the HDD spinning is turned off after half an hour. This introduction of better power management works fine on phones with new or still viable memory. But if your emmc module is already failing before you got this update, then it contributes to it. So in essence an update may have triggered the final demise, but it's already dying before it happened.

Great explanation, though why specifically Samsung phones? I have an old iPhone 4 and LG Optimus Fuel from 2014 as well, I use the LG as my daily music streamer and alarm clock. I haven't had 1 issue with it, hasn't shown signs of dying yet. My Samsung laptop is from 2013, runs brand spanking new (windows update turned off bc it kept slowing down my PC, had to factory reset). I would assume computers would take more abuse than phones in terms of usage and heat generation.

 

[chanchan05]

Great explanation, though why specifically Samsung phones? I have an old iPhone 4 and LG Optimus Fuel from 2014 as well, I use the LG as my daily music streamer and alarm clock. I haven't had 1 issue with it, hasn't shown signs of dying yet. My Samsung laptop is from 2013, runs brand spanking new (windows update turned off bc it kept slowing down my PC, had to factory reset). I would assume computers would take more abuse than phones in terms of usage and heat generation.

Not specifically Samsung phones, but rather specifically the Note 4. Could simply the a quality of emmc modules used in that particular model unit. I don't have a Note 4, but as I said, I have Samsung devices older than the Note 4 which are running well. In a scenario where there is planned obsolecense, my Tab P6200 which is 5 years older than a Note 4 should be obsolete, but it's still being used as my mom's primary tablet for music, surfing, and games.

All in all it still boils down to a bad hardware component.

 

[boudicca00]

Rooted phones have the means to block updates. I have a rooted, old GN3 that's running an older OS. Rooting will void the warranty, but I'm fine with that.

Also, if you purchase your phone with an Amex card, Amex extends the warranty by a year. I think other credit cards offer this was well. So if your phone breaks outside of the warranty period, Amex covers repair costs for an additional year.

 

[flyingkytez]

Rooted phones have the means to block updates. I have a rooted, old GN3 that's running an older OS. Rooting will void the warranty, but I'm fine with that.

Also, if you purchase your phone with an Amex card, Amex extends the warranty by a year. I think other credit cards offer this was well. So if your phone breaks outside of the warranty period, Amex covers repair costs for an additional year.

One reason why I dislike Samsung phones: bloatware. Package disabler pro helps a little, but IDK... Samsung is FORCING the updates by annoying reminders to update your OS, until that 3rd year with the final Doomsday update. Have control of YOUR phone, then has control of the market.

If your Note 8 suffers from the same fate 3 years from now, I will laugh because no one believed it. Most likely people here are phone enthusiasts and will upgrade by then.