Samsung vs Goliath: CCTV takes aim at faulty Galaxy models

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2013-10-23

Samsung's new smartphone, the Galaxy Round, at an telecom fair in
Seoul on Oct. 10, 2013. (Photo/Xinhua)

China's national broadcaster CCTV has launched a scathing attack on electronics giant Samsung, claiming serious flaws in the South Korean company's Galaxy smartphone line.

Experts interviewed during CCTV's Half-hour Economy program on Oct. 22 said popular Samsung products such as the Galaxy Note and the Galaxy S series contain design flaws including problems with the memory chips. Such hardware faults can cause the phone to shut down unexpectedly, prevent users from turning the phone back on, and cost 800 to 2,000 yuan (US$130-$325) each time the phone is taken in for repairs, one expert said.

Samsung's Galaxy S3, released last May, sold more than a million handsets in 50 days and became the world's most popular smartphone with 18 million units sold in the third quarter of 2012 alone.

A young university graduate interviewed by the program said she spent 4,180 yuan (US$685) on a Galaxy S3 in September last year and less than nine months later the phone started exhibiting problems such as switching off by itself when she tried to answer calls. When she took the phone to a Samsung service center for repairs she was told the issue was caused by conflicting applications but the problem remained after she formatted the phone as suggested.

Half a year later, the woman said, her phone was "dying" as often as 20 to 30 times a day, sometimes only a couple of minutes apart. Every time she took the phone in for repairs she was told the same thing, but despite formatting her phone three times she saw no improvement, prompting her to seek an independent repair center which quickly told her that a faulty memory chip on the motherboard was to blame. The staff member at the repair center added that this has been a common problem with Samsung phones and attributed it to design flaws.

After conducting some online research, the smartphone user found 817 posts on microblogs and at least six groups on Tencent's QQ messaging service about Samsung's memory chip issues. Most of the complaints belonged to owners of Galaxy Note or S series smartphones, with many saying that their smartphone eventually "bricked" after repeated shutdowns. Fearing the same would happen to her phone, the woman said she took it back to a Samsung service center again but was repeatedly told that her issue was merely a software — as opposed to hardware — problem.

CCTV also contacted a smartphone repair center which said that they received 13 phones in September with the same chip problem, which accounted for around 20% of all phones sent in for repairs. It is normally a rare problem that occurs in around one in 200 phones, one staff member said, but it appears to be a much more common occurrence with Samsung models.

A Samsung spokesperson told the program that the company is aware that portion of its initial batch of Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note 2 models have encountered memory problems and suggested users experiencing issues should contact their nearest Samsung service center to have their firmware updated free of charge.