Cannot send images in text on Samsung Mega

[Sean Delevan]

Hi,

I am hoping someone can help me. I just purchased a Samsung mega and it has been a disaster from day one. I will lead to disaster part out of it for now and will simply ask a couple questions.

1) Why do I have to turn on my data to send a picture in a message? When I attempt to attach a picture in a message while I am on Wi-Fi it will tell me that it will be sent when my data is turned on. Also, instead of just sending the photo as is, it says that the photos is being converted to multimedia. When I turned the data on and try to send a message I get nothing but a spinning circle beneath the photo.

2) It It is obvious that there are defects with the glass that is used in the Samsung mega. My glass cracked within 24 hours of owning it even though I did not drop it or bang it. I do not know if there was a change in the temperature or what. All I know is I placed the phone down on the counter at night and it was working fine with no cracks. I woke up in the morning and it looked like someone took a scalpel and made a perfect straight incision across the bottom of the screen. I can say with 100% certainty that the phone did not suffer any damage by my hands which could've caused this to happen. After doing battle with AT&T I received a new phone. This time I treated it like it was a fine piece of China. Needless to say, within 36 hours there was a perfectly straight line across the screen from the upper right corner to the left middle section. The line is so fine that it had to come from the bottom up or from the inside to the outside of the glass.

So my question is, has anyone else experienced problems with the glass that is on their phone? Also, is anyone aware of any class action suits regarding this issue? After getting the runaround from Samsung and AT&T, it is obvious they know this is a widespread problem.

Thank you for any response and help.

 

[Rukbat]

1) Why do I have to turn on my data to send a picture in a message?

Text is sent via 2G - voice. Pictures are sent as links in the text - links to picture files that you're sending to the server the carrier uses for MMS files. Sending any file to any internet server is data.

When I attempt to attach a picture in a message while I am on Wi-Fi it will tell me that it will be sent when my data is turned on.

Just a guess because technically there's no reason the picture file can't be uploaded by wifi - but that doesn't use any of your data quota, and that's what the carrier makes money on.

Also, instead of just sending the photo as is, it says that the photos is being converted to multimedia.

Text is the old pocket pager protocol - 140 octets of text (which translates, in our alphabet, into 160 characters). The photo isn't text, and it's a lot larger than 140 octets, so it's being sent as data - that's what "converted to multimedia" means.

2) It It is obvious that there are defects with the glass that is used in the Samsung mega. My glass cracked within 24 hours of owning it even though I did not drop it or bang it. I do not know if there was a change in the temperature or what. All I know is I placed the phone down on the counter at night and it was working fine with no cracks. I woke up in the morning and it looked like someone took a scalpel and made a perfect straight incision across the bottom of the screen. I can say with 100% certainty that the phone did not suffer any damage by my hands which could've caused this to happen. After doing battle with AT&T I received a new phone. This time I treated it like it was a fine piece of China. Needless to say, within 36 hours there was a perfectly straight line across the screen from the upper right corner to the left middle section. The line is so fine that it had to come from the bottom up or from the inside to the outside of the glass.

Sounds like it could be a bad batch of glass (which would mean that AT&T received a bad batch of phones). I've taken my phone from a 68 degree car to a 96 degree driveway, or the other way around, from a 96 degree patio into a 68 degree house, without having any problem. In fact, in all my years in the business I've never heard of anything like that happening. Of course, with screens getting larger and larger, things are going to change, but we have 10" tablets that work with no problem, so a 6" screen shouldn't be the break point.

Also, is anyone aware of any class action suits regarding this issue?

Not aware of any and I think that if you check with an attorney who handles class-action product defect suits, you'll find that pursuing a suit of this type (you'll need proprietary information from the glass manufacturer, Samsung, etc.) it's going to cost a lot more to win the suit than you'd ever get from winning it - and that it would be almost impossible to prove that it's a manufacturing defect. (Proving that Samsung or AT&T knew that they were selling defective merchandise would take a leaked memo or email - which is so rare that it's discounted as a way of winning a suit.)

My personal way of handling it? Since I'm on decent terms with the people at my AT&T Support Center, if it happened again, I'd ask them if I could just swap to a different phone, maybe a Note 3 or an S5 (if they're out by then), or what can they do for me? They don't like taking the same model back for the same defect time after time any more than you like bringing it back.

Oh, a thought. You're not using a screen saver or glass cover on the screen, and the same make and model both times, right? I guess you would have mentioned it if you had. (Not that I've heard of stressing the glass enough to break that way, but I guess it's possible.)