I testing day at the Samsung Experience store Leeds UK yesterday. I have the non function back and menu problem too. The Salesman went off behind the scenes to talk to the engineers and came back and told me that the soft keys would have to be replaced. I asked him why. He said that the update bad blown the keys. I should point out that I am an MSc Computer Science and have been a Firmware Engineer for over 30 years. I have never heard of anything like that happening in that time. As we usually blow the prototypes in a very short period of time long before customers get hold of anything.
He then said he could replace it for free with a S6. As you can imagine this came as shock. A happy one at that. I then decided this can’t be right. So I asked him why. He said my phone was out of warranty and because of that they would not carry out any work on it. After more questions his idea was to sell me a contract phone. Nice one Samsung infact almost cruel.
I then pushed him on why the keys had blown. He stumbled came out with a load of rubbish. I told him that the ARM I/O ports would be 3.3v and it was very unlikely that 5v or 12v would be anywhere near them. I asked him if he understood that it was the Samsung Lollipop 5.0.1 update that has caused the problem to your own hardware and that I didn’t consider this a warranty issue. He then gave me the number for customer support they then gave me the warranty not active. After about an hour of going around in circles they then said if I had proof of purchase I could get my warranty active. Who has this after everything works for a period time. I do this must have come as a shock to them.
I then had to travel all the way home and contact them again to email them the proof of purchase. However, the guy I talked to on that occasion seemed to get the point of what I had been saying all day. The main problem he said was that they were not aware of this issue. So there is no fix in the pipeline for the soft key issue. As the new lollipop 5.1.1 is now being rolled out I can’t see it having a fix.
So a lack of calls to Samsung to highlight this issue has not helped.
However, how this and the other issues well known on this site got past testing on S4 and S5 devices is nothing short of an embarrassment for developers at Samsung. As these issues started to come to light 5 months ago l find it difficult to forgive. Then to be treated as I was by support in the Leeds store and then the Sheffield Customer Support people only goes to show a lack of respect.
I am now waiting to find out what they are going to do about their software not working on their hardware. The automated update doesn’t give you the chance to go back. Yes I could use Kies or root my phone. But that would cause Samsung more room to tell me all about terms, conditions and Company policy. I don’t think I want to lose the will to live again. I don’t consider this a warranty issue. So come on Samsung you have messed up big time now fix it
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