I got my GS5 a couple of weeks ago and I've been experiencing a number of problems with it. I just thought I'd share them (and also share my experience with Samsung's customer service), in case someone is having the same issues.
My carrier is T-Mobile, the phone is brand new, never dropped, no damage, not even a scratch.
Camera: This is where it all started. When trying to take a photo, the camera's buttons will suddenly disappear. At first, restarting it worked so I tried to ignore it. Shortly after, another problem started. My camera became unresponsive - when I tap on it, it will open but it will appear as a black screen. Closing it from the open apps screen or even doing a force stop didn't work. After pressing the home button and then locking/unlocking the phone, I'll get a message saying "Camera isn't responding. Would you like to close it?". If I closed it and tried to open it again, I'll get the exact same problem.
I contacted Samsung's CS and they told me to clear my cache partition. This didn't change anything so they told me to do an update in developer's mode. After I updated it, the camera was back to normal but I started seeing other problems.
Freezing: First S Health stopped working. The phone was completely unresponsive when I tap on the app or widget. Trying to uninstall some apps (e.g. Run Keeper) or opening the gallery also made it freeze .
Lag: At this point I was already considering a master reset so I tried backing up my photos and contacts to my SD card. It was impossible because of the lag when moving files. I also experienced lag with the Application Manager. The usage stats kept showing "computing".
Black screen: This is connected to the lag and the freezing. I would usually get a black screen after trying to open an app or when I lock and unlock my phone for a number of times in a period of one minute. Only the lower multi-window and back buttons were lit up.
Once the phone freezes or shows the black screen, it can't be turned off using the power button. I had to remove the battery.
It's probably worth mentioning that I also noticed some issues with overheating and short battery life.
So, after clearing the cache and updating the software version didn't work, I contacted customer service again. The rep told me that this might be caused by some app I had installed. To see if this was the case, he asked me to start the phone in Safe Mode and check if I experience the same bugs. You can probably tell where this is going but, yes, the problems were still there. He said I'll have to do a master reset which I just did and for the 12390947 time I got the Camera Failed msg. Finally, they told me it's a hardware issue and I should ask T-Mobile for a replacement.
This whole thing has been very frustrating
..but hopefully the info is helpful.
My carrier is T-Mobile, the phone is brand new, never dropped, no damage, not even a scratch.
Camera: This is where it all started. When trying to take a photo, the camera's buttons will suddenly disappear. At first, restarting it worked so I tried to ignore it. Shortly after, another problem started. My camera became unresponsive - when I tap on it, it will open but it will appear as a black screen. Closing it from the open apps screen or even doing a force stop didn't work. After pressing the home button and then locking/unlocking the phone, I'll get a message saying "Camera isn't responding. Would you like to close it?". If I closed it and tried to open it again, I'll get the exact same problem.
I contacted Samsung's CS and they told me to clear my cache partition. This didn't change anything so they told me to do an update in developer's mode. After I updated it, the camera was back to normal but I started seeing other problems.
Freezing: First S Health stopped working. The phone was completely unresponsive when I tap on the app or widget. Trying to uninstall some apps (e.g. Run Keeper) or opening the gallery also made it freeze .
Lag: At this point I was already considering a master reset so I tried backing up my photos and contacts to my SD card. It was impossible because of the lag when moving files. I also experienced lag with the Application Manager. The usage stats kept showing "computing".
Black screen: This is connected to the lag and the freezing. I would usually get a black screen after trying to open an app or when I lock and unlock my phone for a number of times in a period of one minute. Only the lower multi-window and back buttons were lit up.
Once the phone freezes or shows the black screen, it can't be turned off using the power button. I had to remove the battery.
It's probably worth mentioning that I also noticed some issues with overheating and short battery life.
So, after clearing the cache and updating the software version didn't work, I contacted customer service again. The rep told me that this might be caused by some app I had installed. To see if this was the case, he asked me to start the phone in Safe Mode and check if I experience the same bugs. You can probably tell where this is going but, yes, the problems were still there. He said I'll have to do a master reset which I just did and for the 12390947 time I got the Camera Failed msg. Finally, they told me it's a hardware issue and I should ask T-Mobile for a replacement.
This whole thing has been very frustrating
..but hopefully the info is helpful.
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