I was fortunate enough to be given a samsung Galaxy S7 Edge by my company to test drive. My motorola was older and had old software that was not being updated, and the battery started to really go downhill. So I swapped my SIM card and started using the Samsung. What a wonderful phone! Bright beautiful screen as Samsung is known for the best displays. My battery life lasted a day and a half almost (a little less if I was really hitting the phone hard) and the phone never hesitated or got stuck. The phone worked as a phone should work and I finally thought I found THE perfect phone. All the apps ran great and did not eat up a bunch of memory, the camera took some of the best pictures just as nice as my Motorola Droid Turbo pictures used to come out. The phone came with a Commuter Otter case and was in perfect condition. That was 6 months ago, then one day something showed up on the display. An uninvited pink line showed up on the right side and ran down the entire length of the display. I was horrified, I did not drop the phone, it ran in a case all the time, how could this happen what did I do?
I locked my phone and placed it on my desk next to me where it sat unused for a few hours as I was at work and busy with help desk issues. Lunch time came around, I had to run some errands so i grabbed the phone and went to the car. I took the phone out and unlocked it ready to connect the AUX cable to steam some music while driving, wait a minute... where is that pink line? Its gone! What the heck??? I locked the phone a few times and unlocked it wondering what was going on. Then put it out of my mind and went about the rest of my day. The phone was used more the rest of the day and the pink line was gone. I started to chalk it up to maybe it needed a reboot and so I rebooted it that evening back at home. The next day I woke up and unplugged my phone from the charger. I had to check for some emails and so I unlocked the phone and HELLO!! "Hello my name is pinky mcliney and Ill be your riding shot gun on the right side of your phone..." So there it is again. I was mystified I figured I must have done something to cause this and I wasn't sure what, I became convinced that I just had to go through the company warranty and get the phone repaired or replaced and I had a feeling that I may have a denied claim if they said well you dropped it and caused that. I was not looking forward to switching back to my old phone as it now felt outdated and slow. And I was really looking forward to getting the Android 7.0 Nougat on this Samsung to see what it would do.
Fast forward a week goes by and Pinky (the pink line) shows up a few times on and off, I found if I touched the upper right part of the screen it sometimes went away and stayed away for a long time. I did not go to warranty yet, I decided to live with it and I would go to support if it got worse. But then I was looking up stories for my blog and came across a post that said the same issue with the pink line. It was a story about people having the pink lines,
http://wccftech.com/galaxy-s7-edge-display-pink-line/
I was elated sort of, I didn't cause this? Is it a manufacture defect? Apparently so. I read more and more looking at people's comments waiting to see a long list of people who sent the phone back and got a replacement with no hassle. I did not find that. Instead there were a couple like that, but then others who said they were charged for the repair or told a high cost to replace. Then there were more reports of the pink line, ON THE REPLACEMENT DEVICES PEOPLE RECEIVED! So this is a bigger issue than I first thought. Guess what, my phone is still with me. I'm waiting on doing anything about pinky. The rest of the phone works still just as good as it first did 6 months ago. Even the battery is still holding up. My co worker who heads our mobile administration asked me the other day about the phone and if I wanted to get a warranty claim going, I told him no, and told him the stories and the news I found through my research. He agreed that was the best course of action, keep a wait and see stance to find out if Samsung was going to officially acknowledge the defect. So far they have not said anything and there is still an issue and people are not getting answers when they speak to Samsung outside the normal canned tech support responses.
I am a fan of Samsung, I have some of their televisions, I have the washer and dryer (yes it was the washer that had the off balance defect) I have almost all Samsung monitors for all of my computers as well as some of my family's computers. I tell everyone the best screens for a computer are from Samsung. But the company is starting to become a worry to me and my ability to recommend them to everyone is becoming less and less. They did fix the washer quickly, I had a warranty visit from a tech and a new bigger S screw was installed to keep the unit from breaking apart. But that issue along with the pink line issue, along with the Note 7 Battery issue and even some reports about bad TV software glitches has made it harder to trust that Samsung is doing QA well enough and will be able to make great products again that don't have defects. I watched the Galaxy S8 unboxed event. I heard the vow made by the Samsung Executive to get better at this and learn from the Note 7. I watched the video about how they are testing batteries and saw the stress test they run. It makes me feel a little better about Samsung. But this issue with the pink line needs to be addressed. Tell your customers if you can fix it. Tell us you at least have an engineer looking at it. Work with customers on a case by case basis if needed and try to fix or replace the phone. If you cannot fix the issue then at least have some kind of upgrade for the customers. Even if not a full replace to a new device if the customers device is a little older, then just provide the customers with some kind of better discount on a new phone. The Note 7 was a safety issue, the washing machine was a safety issue. This does not appear to cause the phone to become unsafe to use but it is a huge defect and makes the using of the phone more cumbersome it aggravates the user when it should not have to.
In a way it IS a safety issue...to the Safety of Samsung and their future sales and loyal customers. Samsung if you do not acknowledge this or look into it for your customers, they are going to turn away in droves. It will make your customers pause before they buy that beautiful new S8 and S8+ you came out with. Even corporate customers who love the Samsung devices, will edit their policies and tell their sales reps, "Show me all the Android devices but take Samsung out of the search" I think if this pink line is at least discussed by Samsung and acknowledged it will help. if you tell us it will take time to fix but you are looking at it, it will help us feel like you really care. Don't be a company that just bets on your name and won't take the time to listen to your customers. Help us get rid of the pink line AKA"Pinky Mcliney"
