Fuck you, Samsung


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    I used to like Samsung. I really did.

    I bought a Samsung laptop (NP700Z). Great, fast, lightweight, looks nice. My wife got one too.

    Now, both our laptops have the exact same mechanical failure. The bolt that holds the left screen hinge to the case snapped. Sorry, I should say the HOUSING snapped. The metal housing. Snap, right off. Why? Because who would have thought people would be actually opening and closing their laptop hundreds or thousands of times? Metal fatigue, what's that? And hey, let's also NOT account for the fact that the CPU vents right near than housing, so let's not test for high heat conditions. lol. Let's just let it snap, bend the motherboard and short the whole computer out. Current solution is opening it up, putting non-conductive material in place to prevent shorts, seal it, then ZIPTIE THE WHOLE FUCKING EDGE SHUT! Short of drilling a new hole, or spot-welding the metal housing back together, that's the best there is.

    So one of the main selling features of it being a nice-looking computer-- bye!

    And then there's my phone. Phones. Bricks. Whatever.

    First I bought the Samsung Galaxy Discover. Entry level, $50, I knew what I was getting into. A low powered device that could take phone calls, pictures and maybe some 2D games. Well, until the camera stopped auto-focusing. And then the whole thing would just randomly glitch out and freeze. Okay, maybe I need a better phone.

    Enter the Samsung Galaxy S5 Active. Everything I wanted. Good specs. Waterproof. Physical buttons. Rugged. I ordered one from eBay (because Samsung decided fuck 🍁-- more on that). It works great-- for a while. Then just starts randomly rebooting, and then eventually just crashes on POST. Repair shop says it may be glitchy motherboard. $120 to fix.

    Well, it is technically under warranty, right? And it turns out it IS sold in Canada, but only through contract. Great, I'll get it warrantied. NOPE. Long (very annoying) story short, because I'm physically in Canada, they won't touch the phone. Ever. Even if I travel to the States and give it to them. And even if they did, they won't ship it back to Canada because apparently an international corporation can't figure out how to ship across the North American border. Fucking-- fine, I'll just pay the $120.

    It's fixed by an authorized Samsung dealer. I have my phone back. I use it for a while. After the fix warranty is up-- the phone starts to rattle. Like there's something loose. And then the video card keeps crashing-- and then when I reboot I'll either get static, or blank screen, or it'll work. Except after a while "it'll work" stopped being an option.

    So now I have a phone that won't boot. I'm sure it's a loose video connector, but the only way for me to fix it is to shell out another $120, or open it. Did I mention opening it to get at the motherboard involves using a hot gun to melt off the glue holding the screen, and dismantle the phone? Because who would ever want to get at the BACK of the phone through the BACK? Fuuuuuuuuuu-- oh, and it'll also destroy the waterproof seal, so there goes that feature.

    Fuck it. I need a phone now. I have a wife in the middle of a high-risk pregnancy. I'm not going without a phone. I just need something to shove my SIM card into. Fine, what's on eBay that's cheap-- ships from Canada (because fuck those cross-border motherfuckers), and takes the form factor of the SIM I have?

    Cheapest one is-- a iPhone 4 with a broken front-camera for $60. From there it jumps up to $100+ Samsungs.

    Fucking-- wow. I've avoided Apple thusfar, but fuck it. I just need a phone.

    So FUCK YOU Samsung. Fuck you so hard I just bought a fucking IPHONE. Let THTAT tell you how much spite I have for you right now.



  • This is probably too late if you've already bought the iphone, but did you check your local Kijiji listings? I've got some cheap smartphones in my local one.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @hungrier said:

    This is probably too late if you've already bought the iphone, but did you check your local Kijiji listings? I've got some cheap smartphones in my local one.

    I thought Kijiji was just eBay reskinned to look like it's local, in order to fool people into thinking they're on Craigstlist.

    In any case, I doubt I'd get one that was working, with a micro-SIM card, was either unlocked or locked to Bell/Virgin Mobile, and was coming from a reputable dealer, for under $60.



  • @Lorne_Kates said:

    The metal housing. Snap, right off. Why? Because who would have thought people would be actually opening and closing their laptop hundreds or thousands of times? Metal fatigue, what's that? And hey, let's also NOT account for the fact that the CPU vents right near than housing, so let's not test for high heat conditions. lol. Let's just let it snap, bend the motherboard and short the whole computer out.

    They are perfectly aware that their products are pieces of shit that will break in a few years.

    By the time people realize that a certain product is a piece of shit and start posting angry reviews, the product is obsolete. It has already sold all the units it was supposed to sell, got taken off the shelves, and the warranties have expired. Better luck next time!


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @hungrier said:

    This is probably too late if you've already bought the iphone

    Some US MVNOs are selling the 2015 Moto E for $60 and the G for about $100-120 or so. If it's not too late to send back the iPhone, you might be able to score a similar deal with a Canadian provider.


  • Dupa

    @Lorne_Kates said:

    Cheapest one is-- a iPhone 4 with a broken front-camera for $60. From there it jumps up to $100+ Samsungs.

    And now you've got yourself one of the best smartphones ever. Also, the most beautiful of all.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place



  • @Lorne_Kates said:

    I thought Kijiji was just eBay reskinned to look like it's local, in order to fool people into thinking they're on Craigstlist.

    No, it's definitely local. In my experience, craigslist has been a ghost town, whereas Kijiji and to a lesser extent the used* network are pretty active.

    It may be different where you are, but the quick search I did before my post had a Nexus 4, some HTC phones, etc. for under 100.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @FrostCat said:

    $103

    >.$60

    edit Fucking Discource. I can't start a like with > (the actual character, not the HTML entity) otherwise it treats it as a quote?

    Also, I intend on fixing the Active 5S, since aside from it not working, it's an otherwise fine phone.



  • Android isn't so much opensource anymore, and Apple installs less crapware and iPhones runs Discourse better. I think my next phone will be an iPhone too



  • @fbmac said:

    Android isn't so much opensource anymore, and Apple installs less crapware and iPhones runs Discourse better. I think my next phone will be an iPhone too

    Which manufacturer are you basing the crapware claim on? I've had good luck with LG installing minimal crapware, and making it easy to remove.


  • BINNED

    Slight offtopic: that hinge thing is becoming epidemic. I know of it happening to several laptop models in the last few years. Including my sister's cheapy Lenovo. The yellow pages are full of listings for it "for spare parts". You can find every single part working perfectly, 99% of the time in the same machine - the only thing that fails is that the bottom of the casing simply snaps right under the hinges.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Samsung install a fair bit, but they also make it super easy to disable so it's no biggie. It even stays disabled during updates.

    I've only just gone from Android (S5) to iPhone (6S) but the iPhone is definitely better. It's faster, the screen is better, and the battery life smashes the battery life of the S5, which is actually pretty good anyway.



  • @loopback0 said:

    I've only just gone from Android (S5) to iPhone (6S) but the iPhone is definitely better. It's faster, the screen is better, and the battery life smashes the battery life of the S5, which is actually pretty good anyway.

    That's pretty much how I felt going from the S4 to the LG G3, and now I'm on the G4. Can't wait for the G5 to come out next year. :P


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Lorne_Kates said:

    >.$60

    Yeah, I know, but I didn't know if $60 was a hard limit or not.

    As I said, you can get the new Mote E for that price with some carriers in the US, but the only one I know of in Canada is Rogers, so I can't look up Canadian prices for you.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    OMG you're one of those types that gets a new phone every year.



  • @FrostCat said:

    OMG you're one of those types that gets a new phone every year.

    Since LG provides a tool for transferring data from your old device, it's actually a pretty smooth transition. And I can wave my phone-peen around. :P


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Yeah, I was talking more about the cost.


  • BINNED

    @abarker said:

    phone-peen

    I hope you're at least using a condom.


    Filed under: It's purple, too!


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    That's.... bright.



  • @FrostCat said:

    Yeah, I was talking more about the cost.

    Oh, T-Mobile's Jump has me covered there.



  • I still have a Samsung Galaxy Note 3. Works. I'm a bit unsatisfied with screen resolution now that standards are higher, but I cannot replace it because it works so damned well.

    It's pretty close to what I'd expect from a generic phone, in terms of reliability; CyanogenMod is known to cause spontaneous reboots, but those are quite rare.

    If it kicked the bucket, I still have my Nokia 1280. Too bad it cannot into internets and tethering.



  • @Lorne_Kates said:

    Enter the Samsung Galaxy S5 Active.

    So you bought two defective laptops from them and then you leap at the chance of buying a phone from the same company?

    Jesus, some people never learn.

    @Lorne_Kates said:

    So FUCK YOU Samsung. Fuck you so hard I just bought a fucking IPHONE. Let THTAT tell you how much spite I have for you right now.

    You could have bought a Windows Phone.



  • E_NOT_A_BUG

    <g


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @abarker said:

    Oh, T-Mobile's Jump has me covered there.

    T-mo's got poor signal in my office, said the people who had it and switched to Vz.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    So you bought two defective laptops from them and then you leap at the chance of buying a phone from the same company?

    I must admit their washing machines and vacuum cleaners are damn good.



  • Only poor signal I've had is in my old house. Outside was fine, but inside sucked. But that sort of thing should be expected when you build a bunch of houses and line the roofs with radiant barriers. Fortunately, T-Mobile gave us a free cell repeater that fixed that issue, and WiFi calling worked wonders as well. And it's not like the problem was limited to T-Mobile. Everyone who visited us at that place had trouble, whether they had AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, or whoever.



  • I wouldn't buy a washing machine from the same company I'd buy a laptop from. Who knows. Maybe I'm the freak.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I wouldn't buy a washing machine from the same company I'd buy a laptop from. Who knows. Maybe I'm the freak.
    I'd rather do the reverse — not buy a laptop from a company I buy a washing machine from.


  • :belt_onion:

    +1

    I'm a big fan of Motorola (right now I'm using a Nexus 6 - previously had a Moto X and Razr M)

    They make really good phones, especially for the price.


  • :belt_onion:

    I can definitely tell the difference - I've got both a Verizon phone (my old Moto X) and a phone on Google Fi (Tmo/Sprint) and the Vzn phone has much better service overall. That's not to say that Fi's service is unusable - it's usually fine, but Vzn outperforms everyone here.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    I had a Samsung laptop too, before they stopped selling laptops in Europe and it wasn't great. Not terrible, just not great build quality.

    No complaints with my Samsung Smart TV really, although if I actually used more of the Smart features I'd probably be annoyed that most of them got turned off by Samsung.



  • @fbmac said:

    iPhones runs Discourse better

    Are we calling that a feature now? 😏


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @Lorne_Kates said:

    since aside from it not working, it's an otherwise fine phone.

    Usually that's the definition of "not nice"...


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @wft said:

    buy a laptop from a company I buy a washing machine from.

    I think they should include a package deal where you get a mounting rack for the laptop to go inside the washing machine/dryer if you by the two in combo.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Tsaukpaetra said:

    @Lorne_Kates said:
    since aside from it not working, it's an otherwise fine phone.

    Usually that's the definition of "not nice"...

    "aside from it not working, it's an otherwise fine forum platform"



  • @abarker said:

    Which manufacturer are you basing the crapware claim on?

    My s3 is the stock version and came with trials I can't uninstall and a spamming app that even had a version with a bug that wouldn't let the phone sleep (Samsung destaques or something, it was probably specific to their br version).

    The upgrade to KitKat came with more crapware, and some I couldn't disable.



  • @fbmac said:

    My s3 is the stock version and came with trials I can't uninstall and a spamming app that even had a version with a bug that wouldn't let the phone sleep (Samsung destaques or something, it was probably specific to their br version).

    The upgrade to KitKat came with more crapware, and some I couldn't disable.

    There's your problem. Samsung is the worst in terms of crapware.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @abarker said:

    Samsung is the worst in terms of crapware.

    Newer phones let you disable almost all of it.



  • Why don't just get a dumbphone? Like mine. Those seemingly never die.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @marczellm said:

    Why don't just get a dumbphone? Like mine

    Even @boomzilla bailed on that particular time pod and got a smartphone IIRC.

    :belt_onion:


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @marczellm said:

    Those seemingly never die.

    Until carriers stop transmitting on 1G networks, I suppose...



  • @Lorne_Kates said:

    ... aside from it not working, it's an otherwise fine phone

    Well yes. I could (and did, back then) say the same for my original Motorola Droid. But I doubt you'll be able to fix it without spending far more than it's worth.

    @Tsaukpaetra said:

    Until carriers stop transmitting on 1G networks, I suppose...

    The unit referenced is a 2G phone. The dumb-phone I still keep around (a [URL=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Razr#V3c]Motorola RAZR V3c[/URL]) is a 3G (CDMA-2000) phone and should keep working for a long time - until the carriers drop all pre-LTE service, which isn't likely to happen any time soon.

    That was a great phone. I used it for 5 years without any problems (other than needing to get a new battery.) The only reason I stopped using it was because I thought it would be fun to have a smartphone (that 1st-generation Droid I mentioned.) Every now and then I consider going back to it (especially when apps start misbehaving) but I decide not to when I realize that Verizon will only reduce my contract price by $10/mo to switch from a smartphone to a dumb phone. Back when smartphones were a new thing, it would've saved $30/mo - and I might switch back for that money.



  • @fbmac said:

    iPhones runs Discourse better. I think my next phone will be an iPhone too

    Please stop fucking enabling Jeff...


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Deadfast said:

    @fbmac said:
    iPhones runs Discourse better. I think my next phone will be an iPhone too

    Please stop fucking enabling Jeff...

    Jeff doesn't support iPad if you're using Chrome. There are also more iOS specific hacks to make it work with Discourse than other platforms.



  • @loopback0 said:

    There are also more iOS specific hacks to make it work with Discourse than other platforms.

    I'm going to on a limb here and assume Jeff has an iPhone? 😛



  • This post is deleted!

  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    How did you ever guess?!



  • @fbmac said:

    What is the platform that discourse works?

    I heard reading the database directly offers the best results...



  • @pjh won't give us SQL access, but that's probably how he uses it


Log in to reply