Devices are “dying,” but Samsung replaces failing parts without asking questions

Dec 21, 2012 12:01 GMT  ·  By

Galaxy S III, Samsung’s current flagship Android-based smartphone is reportedly plagued by yet another issue, this time hardware-related.

Recently, the device was found to be affected by a security flaw, yet nothing beyond repair, and Samsung has already confirmed that a fix was coming.

The new problem, however, appears to be of a more serious nature, with the device’s mainboard dying unexpectedly after around 150 – 200 days of use.

The problem was reported for the first time over a month ago on the XDA-Developers forum, and many other users confirmed similar issues with their phones.

Apparently, Samsung is providing replacements to its users regardless of whether the phone has been rooted or not, even if it was running under unofficial software before failing.

According to some rumors on the matter, the issue might be related to the NAND memory, which is said to become corrupted and fail.

Furthermore, reports suggest that Samsung is replacing the mainboards with chipsets featuring the same revision, which might not actually resolve the issue.

Samsung hasn’t provided an official announcement on the matter, but it seems that the issue is somehow widespread.

As AndroidAuthority reports, Reddit user TurtleRecall notes a similar issue with their Galaxy S III unit. Apparently, the people over at the Samsung repair center also confirmed that the issue appeared a lot lately.

There are no specific details available on how widespread the issue actually is, nor on what Samsung is planning to do to resolve it. However, it’s almost certain that the problem is not an isolated one.

Those who would like to learn more on what users who encountered the issue have to say about it should head over to this forum thread at XDA-Developers. Hopefully, it won’t be too long before Samsung offers some more details on the matter, so stay tuned to learn more on this.