Samsung Galaxy S5 Problems Starts Showing Ahead of Launch Date

The government ban on smartphone sales in South Korea  could pressure Samsung into launching the Galaxy S5 earlier than planned. The three major South Korean carriers are being punished for illegal subsidizing with a ban on smartphone sales, including the Samsung Galaxy S5. Due to this, the device won’t go on sale until about two weeks after its planned April 11 launch date.

Although Sammy will debut its flagship phone in about 150 countries simultaneously, postponing the premiere in its home country appears to be undesirable. A source inside South Korea Telecom, the nation’s largest carrier, stated that if the S5 launches after April 5, which is when the government ban will hit the telecom, the smartphone will “have a smaller impact on the market” according to a SK Telecom spokesman. If the S5 debuts on April 11, only LG U+, South Korea’s smallest carrier, will have the opportunity to sell it for a short period between April 11 and 27.

Obviously, this is unacceptable for Samsung. “Although Samsung is a global company, it is based in Korea. It cannot underestimate the impact of the No. 1 carrier SK Telecom.” – an inside source told the Korean Herald, and added – “Samsung is considering rescheduling the release date before April 5 when SK Telecom‘s business suspension starts.”

Another source suggested that an early South Korean launch might affect the global release date as well. Reportedly, the new date is March 27, which is this Thursday. If that’s true, then Samsung and the three carriers will have to hastily put together and promote a launch event. In addition, we doubt that the company has produced enough Galaxy S5 units to meet demand.

Pouring fuel into the fire, a Korean report suggests that Samsung is facing issues with the coating process for the S5’s lens module. Although they are making good progress in fixing these errors, the Korean tech-giant has definitely taken a hit as a result.. Due to these difficulties, the company expects to have between 4 to 5 million units ready at launch, while it originally aimed towards 7 million units. Furthermore, pulling the launch event to March 27 means that the phone will sell for about week and a half until April 5 in South Korea, before sales there are suspended. This sounds like an awkward plan, considering the huge initial demand for the phone.

 

 

Ultimately, we advice against holding your breath for a sudden Thursday launch. But who knows, maybe Samsung and the telecoms will figure out a way to circumvent the government ban and bring the Galaxy S5 earlier than expected.

Apple iPad Air Demo model catches fire in Australian Vodafone store!

A Vodafone retail store in Canberra, Australia was forced to evacuate earlier this week after an iPad demo unit burst into flames, according to News.com.au. While no one was injured, the news outlet says that the “explosion” was large enough that the city’s firebrigade was called to the scene….

Here’s News.com.au with the report:

” A burst of flames” appeared from the charging port of an iPad demo model, a Vodafone spokesperson confirmed to news.com.au.

The firebrigade was called in after the store filled with smoke and sparks continued to appear from the charging port.

No staff members or customers were injured during the incident, Vodafone confirmed.” 

The site goes on to say that an Apple representative visited the Vodafone store on Wednesday to collect the device to try and determine what exactly caused the incident, but not much else is known. And as you can imagine, the company has thus far refused any requests for comments.

Keep in mind that this isn’t the first time that an Apple device has caused safety concerns this year. Back in July, a Chinese woman died after reportedly receiving an electric shockfrom her iPhone. And just a few weeks later, a Chinese man was left in a coma after a similar incident.

Apple went on to blame “unauthorized third-party adapters” for the incident, and launched its‘Takeback’ initiative, which discounted official power adapters to $10 with trade-in. But with this device being in a retailer store, it’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, it has to say this time.

Note that the original News.com.au story said the tablet that caught fire was a new iPad Air demo model, but it has since changed it to simply “an iPad demo model.”

Samsung Galaxy S4 Problems Starts Showing !

It appears that even the most anticipated phone of the first half of the year isn’t immune to issues as adopters of the Samsung Galaxy S4 are complaining about a number of different issues, including problems with the phone’s battery life and with its display.

The Samsung Galaxy S4, which was once one of the most anticipated devices in recent memory, is now becoming one of the most widely adopted devices of the year thanks to its high-end hardware including a 5-inch 1080p display, quad-core processor, 13MP camera, and a slim and lightweight design. It also features quality software in the form of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and is loaded up with Samsung’s many TouchWiz features.

Despite the many advances in technology and despite this being Samsung’s biggest smartphone launch of the year, the Galaxy S4 unfortunately doesn’t appear to be void of issues.  In fact, owners of the new high-end smartphone have been chiming in reporting a number of different problems with the new flagship, with many more likely to spring up in the days ahead.

No smartphone is perfect so it’s not surprising to see owners having issues with the device. And while the Galaxy S4 issues that have surfaced aren’t going to be deal breakers for those that have yet to adopt the phone, they are certainly going to be headaches for those that encounter them.

Here is what we are hearing so far in regards to issues with the Samsung Galaxy S4.

Battery Life Issues

One issue that we’ve heard a few owners complaining about, and one that we’ve seen ourselves, is abnormal battery drain when using the Samsung Galaxy S4 and its massive 2,600 mAh battery.

As we have pointed out many times in the past, battery life will vary from person to person based on use case so it’s impossible to say whether these are isolated issues or if they are widespread among early adopters.

Display Issues

There do appear to be more than a few people that are suffering from display issues with the Samsung Galaxy S4. As evidenced on XDA-Developers forum, owners are seeing smudging when scrolling on the phone. Specifically, the darker colors start showing up as purple when scrolling through the user interface.

Galaxy S4 owners are seeing issues with the display as well.

It appears that there are definitely a good number of people that are affected by this problem. And whether Samsung can fix this issue or not remains to be seen.

As for the battery life issues, those are typically addressed with bug fix updates or major Android updates wherein battery life often improves for those experiencing issues. Users can also invest in an extended battery or external battery in order to supply the Galaxy S4 with more juice though at this time, options are limited.

Galaxy S4 Users Say Samsung Forgot to Tell about the ‘S Lag’ feature!

It’s really starting to look like Samsung rushed the Galaxy S4 to retailers this year. Just about a week or two after the Galaxy S4 was announced, Samsung announced that the Exynos 5 Octa chip supports LTE. Which was the big reason why the US and other LTE markets were getting a Snapdragon 600 processor. Then once it got close to launch, the Galaxy S4 began to be backordered. In fact Sprint and T-Mobile are still sold out. Now we’re seeing complaints that the Exynos 5 Octa has been lagging while doing nothing. Which is pretty sad for a 8-core processor, am I right?

A Twitter user says “Samsung forgot to market it’s most prominent feature, S Lag. The feature that makes your 8 core 2 week old phone lag while doing nothing.” The user is playing off of Samsung’s motto of “S all the things”. This is actually quite surprising, since the Exynos processor has been rather zippy in most reviews and demos. Additionally, the Exynos 5 octa has beaten rivals in benchmarks, rather annihilated them.

We’ve heard from Samsung’s head, JK Shin that “it doesn’t matter what processor your Galaxy S4 is running”, well it looks like it does Mr. Shin. I haven’t used either Galaxy S4 yet, so I can’t confirm whether it does actually lag or not. But I don’t think a Galaxy S4 user would lie about lagging. But weirder things have happened. We’re seeing reports that the ‘S Lag’ is only on the Galaxy S4 Exynos 5 Octa edition, so it looks like those of us in the US, UK, and other countries lucked out getting the Snapdragon 600. Where it appears Samsungs “most prominent” feature is now apparent. Which is actually a good thing this time around.

The 16GB version of the Samsung Galaxy S4 only has 8GB of usable storage

In their review of the new Samsung Galaxy S4, CNET found out the following:

Nearly half of the S4′s storage space (after a factory reset, our 16GB Galaxy S4 showed 8.49GB of available room) is taken up with the phone’s operating system and built-in apps, limiting the amount of data you can store on the company’s quad-core monster.

Now the question is, should Samsung sell it as an 8GB phone?