Rattle

[Fk28]

Lightly tapping near the top of the phone causes a rattle sound that's driving me nuts. I took the back cover off and it's not coming from the SD card slot nor the power or the volume rocker. The sound seems to be around the camera lens area. There does seem to be an ever so slight vertical movement in the camera lens housing when moved with a fingernail. Applying slight upward pressure seems to lessen the rattle. My son has the AT&T version and his rattles too. A bit miffed here as a phone in this price range should not be making chassis noises. Phone is still within the 14 day warrantee period so it's back to Costco to see what they say. Anybody else is having this issue?

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

Lightly tapping near the top of the phone causes a rattle sound that's driving me nuts. I took the back cover off and it's not coming from the SD card slot nor the power or the volume rocker. The sound seems to be around the camera lens area. There does seem to be an ever so slight vertical movement in the camera lens housing when moved with a fingernail. Applying slight upward pressure seems to lessen the rattle. My son has the AT&T version and his rattles too. A bit miffed here as a phone in this price range should not be making chassis noises. Phone is still within the 14 day warrantee period so it's back to Costco to see what they say. Anybody else is having this issue?

I just tried to see if I could hear it...I could not.

 

[chrishoyt2013]

Same here...nothing. In all reality this phone is only worth a few hundred dollars. Some website actually priced every part of this phone. Carriers inflate the price to make money on people that dont have insurance or dont want to have a contract. If its annoying you take it back and exchange it for a new one.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk 2

 

[garublador]

Same here...nothing. In all reality this phone is only worth a few hundred dollars. Some website actually priced every part of this phone.

To be fair, the BOM/manufacturing cost is not the only cost associated with a product. There's all the facilities, R&D, software, packaging, distribution and customer service costs you have to make up just to break even, then Samsung surprisingly enough wants to actually make money as do the retailers, who also have to pay for facilities, customer service, distribution and sales people. It's not like the CEO of Verizon just pockets the $400 difference between the BOM cost and the cost of a phone off contract.

 

[Fk28]

Took the phone back to Costco and got another one. Not perfect (could not hear it at all in the store)...still has a slight rattle but it's much better than the first one. If it gets worse in the next couple of days, back it goes again.

 

[Fk28]

Update: The second phone did not rattle as much as the first one but the lag and stutter that a lot of people complain about was off the charts bad. The first phone was very smooth but sounded like it had rocks in it. It's amazing that two phones could be so different in both build and performance. I took the second phone back to Costco (again), only this time the kiosk agent told me that he would not exchange the phone for another unit because of the lag & stutter issue. This left me with no other choice than to return the phone for a full refund. For now at least it's back to my original Galaxy S1, but hey, I got my unlimited data back at least.

This phone has many features and performance improvements that could potentially make the S4 a winner, but it's not there yet. Build quality needs improvement as well as software/firmware updates to solve some of the performance issues (most notably the lag/stutter issue). In the mean time I will remain on the sidelines and wait to see if Samsung/Verizon will address these issues.