Samsung facing consumer backlash over Android 4.3 problems
There is no doubting Samsung has been responsible for some great smartphones over the last couple of years but the company has been tarnishing its reputation recently, and Samsung could be facing a consumer backlash over the ongoing Android 4.3 update problems.
The last few weeks the Internet has been awash with news about various problems that have been affecting owners of the Samsung Galaxy S3 and Galaxy S4 after installing the Android 4.3 Jelly Bean update. Both versions of the new firmware was pulled by the company and despite reports to the contrary no fix has been released for the Galaxy S3 at the time of writing, while some users are seeing a new version of the Galaxy S4 Android 4.3 update.
Despite this new version many users are still reporting the software contains problems such as battery drain. The biggest complaint that many owners of the handsets though is the silence from the company, although it has commented on its UK Facebook page and confirmed it is aware of the problems with the operating system on the Galaxy S3 and that they are working on a solution.
But reading through some of the comments we have received from users and those on the UK Facebook account for Samsung many are unhappy at the amount of time a fix is taking. Many feel that Samsung is ignoring them with many claiming that despite buying a number of Samsung smartphones in the past, in the future they will look elsewhere.
Many have commented asking about any information about the whereabouts of the new update for a fix to their problems, but so far there has been no further comment from the company. At the time of writing there is no sign of the Android 4.3 update for our unlocked version of the Galaxy S3, but once it is available we will download the software to report back on how it performs.
While Samsung can look forward to selling millions of new smartphones in the coming months, some consumers at least could be thinking of looking at rival manufacturers for their next smartphone.
Update: The Android 4.3 firmware has been released again for Galaxy S3 more details here.
Will you purchase another Samsung smartphone after these problems with the Android 4.3 update?
Comments
65 thoughts on “Samsung facing consumer backlash over Android 4.3 problems”
I will not buy another samsung phone ever again ive been with them for as long as ive had a mobile phone but ive missed several appointments threw this update its unbeatable to think that samsung could release a firmware like they have
Atd1984. How long have you bin using Samsung? So after this mistakes after all the good service you say because of this i will stop buying it? Mmmm ok…
a minute ago
−
6 years ive had samsung phones for but time to try something new as they always release updates late I know it sounds iffy but enough is enough thank you for your intrest (jermaine smit)
4 years for Apple = no problems. 4 months with Samsung S4 = dead phone.
I am using Samsung a long time already no problems. In a way you just have badluck with that. Same as others will have it with Nokia, Sony Apple and so on. Sometimes you land on the bad side of luck with phones.
Had enough of this fiasco…. going for a nexus with pure android for my next phone…
6 years ive had samsung phones for but time to try something new as they always release updates late I know it sounds iffy but enough is enough thank you for your intrest (jermaine smit)
Samsung is poor in the SW department, so how one could expect greatness in Tizen? as Touchwiz messes up the Android experience
My gs3 was my first Samsung phone but it is also my last. Can’t believe I paid 500 euros for this phone and get this crappy support from Samsung. Been waiting for an update for too long… At least they could give us a “Google edition” ROM (like s4) without that tw crap.
same here bro I just invested my entire savings on this phone and just getting this creepy support thinking to buy htc from next time
Anybody with a warranty on their S3 tried to claim on it?
As for me, my phone is long out of warranty and I have a day off on Sunday. If a fix hasn’t been released by then it is getting rooted and a ROM put on it. I cant wait any longer for the update with a phone that doesn’t last 8 hours on a charge.
I didnt root my phone I found the official 4.1.2 and flashed it with odin. Now my battery lasts a full day now. Phone still being recognised by kies
This will be my last Samsung phone. I just went back to 4.1.2 official samsung stock. Found it on the web and flashed it with odin. Finally back to normal didn’t have to root my phone.
First and last samsung phone. Back to apple.
If an iPhone does everything you need then why do you even own a Android? Or, you know, you could always buy an Android handset without the rubbish OEM overlay and that gets prompt updates.
Me too
Samsung are, Totally Ignorant and totally out of touch with it’s users. I’ve been left with an unusable phone since this up-date. I cannot answer calls at all with the screen Lag. I’ve had to start using my old HTC again and thinking of going back to them.
Every time I’ve been in-touch with Samsung regarding a fix or a Roll Back to the OLD ROM, Which IS possible, I just get a standard automated response. NO HELP what so ever…
I didnt root my phone I found the official 4.1.2 and flashed it with odin. Now my battery lasts a full day now. Phone still being recognised by kies. GT-I9300
anybody want to return to previous android stock 4.1.2. Model no GT-I9300. UK UNLOCKED VERSION. Can contact me on nav197707@o2.co.uk.
How do you go back to version 4.1.2. Please help, I would email you but my phone wont let me and my computer is acting up.
Ive downloaded the md5 file from the net. But it is the uk version and model number GT-I9300 UNLOCKED. Used odin software to flash the software all files must be backed up as all data is erased.
After leaving Apple, I bought HTC. I then decided to try the Samsung S3. That turned out to be a big mistake. Stuck on Android 4.1.2 for ages and when an update finally did arrive, it rendered my phone unusable! Sorry Samsung but when I’m up for renewal it will be back to HTC for me.
Yo should go the AOSP way. 4.4 runs goooood.
if waiting for an android update is actually your concern then you should get a nexus. Not sure why you need every update right away though…
Back to Apple for me
This is absolutely disgusting. My last 3 mobile phones have been Samsung and I wont be buying another one. I’m just lucky my contract is up in 2 months. nexus or HTC it is. I wouldn’t mind if they just let everyone know what is happening but nothing;(. Bought a new TV last week and even though Samsung was the cheapest I went with LG just out of principle. Samsung pull your finger out before you loose more customers.
I had nexus before the s4.. No bloatware and 100 times more stable.. Funny though that nexus phones are usual made by Samsung lol. Nexus seems to be the better phones now as Google keeps it pure stock.
Yep. I got an s3 and even before this whole thing I made up my mind: my next smartphone will be anything BUT Samsung’s. Their software is horrible. I own one of their 55″ smart tv’s as well and its software sucks too. Wish I’d gone with an LG or Sony. Samsung simply doesn’t give a **** about their customers or otherwise just has bad software engineers.
I have the s4, the Camera is rubbish its worse than the first ever digital Camera, Wifi Dropouts getting worse, click notifications and the screen stays locked. Goes on Random silent spells. Group play knocks out wifi so Tabs can’t connect. Battery needs 2 charging a day and thats just a few of the issues. Once a loyal Samsung Customer, Not no more, I won’t be buying the S5 I was saving for because the updates from Samsung are always SH!T
I must say.. I’ve noticed I’ve had missed calls and never heard my phone ring or vibrate… And it was an important call about my electric metre appointment as well…
When I contacted Samsung they said that they haven’t received a single complaint about the upgrade. My phone constantly reboots (even in the middle of a call), the touch screen is sluggish at best and I can’t listen to music to name just a few of the many problems.
My wireless provider wants to flash the phone but not sure what good that will do if it is a problem with the OS that they are just going to put right back on the phone. So completely over Samsung and their complete lack of interest providing customer service.
At least your turned on. Mine is dead.
Phoned samsung to be told the didn’t test properly feel like we have been forgotten since the update music player skips light takes time to turn on cant end calls because screen goes blank and as for the battery needs charging up 3 times a day have done back up and reset did help a bit but feel samsung have not really attempted to fix problem in answer to question no I don’t think I will buy another device from them.
Agreed.Doubt I will get another Samsung phone after this experience, I was also told that they were unaware of the issue, even though there is plenty of evidence to the contrary online. terrible customer service and find it hard to believe they have still not released a fix for it. Back to HTC for me next I think.
Whole of last year when the note 2 was the flagship model no updates, even the s3 owners got one update and now we are relegated to the bottom of the update heap. 4.3 is yet to arrive in the uk. I am fast losing my patience with both samsung and android, you pay £ 500-600 for phone and only get 18 months support and only if they can be bothered, PCs are updated regularly for several year and yet they cost about the same.
solution back up your data, then go to manual mode (hold home, power and vol+ buttons for a while), format cache memory (optional – factory reset but will erase everything) then restart … as pointed out on may many sites about this issue problem solved over a day battery life with moderate use no lag problem all good (except for the music player stuttering) if you’d rather whinge on the internet than reading the solution (as applies to 90% of internet users) carry on. Users wanting to go back to the I(diot)phone just look at the fiasco ios6 and 7 proved to be [note they didn’t get pulled] (maps crashes blue screen of death etc. etc ) Sorry they’re not bugs they’re features [to the church of Apple]
Cant back it up if it does not turn on
Nope, experience i had with galaxy s3 and experience i spectated on s4 users shows clearly that Samsung is better at producing products with rival companies brains behind their design. In a couple of months my contract is up and i will choose either htc or sony flagmans at that time…
No l will no longer purchase another product from them. Now going into three weeks and no sign of update fix. And the silence from them does them no favours where customers are concerned.
This update was a shambles and no way should have been released, suppossed to make things better not worse…
l really liked this phine alot but now even the name BUGS 🙂 me now…
Bye Samsung another customer gone…
I’m down for another as long as they stop this KNOX nonsense. Currently running 4.3 on my S4, runs faster and smoother though there is the loss of flash support. Only other problem I see with Samsung is they are trending way too proprietary: All Share, Galaxy Gear…. Samsung, please don’t turn into another crApple
I spoke too soon. Flash player is up and running now too.
Never buy a Samsung phone its bullshit service to the customers… after 3 weeks, still there is no solution for 4.3 jelly beans. ….
I love their phones and their intuitive ideas. But what really pushes me away from the more and more each day is their lack of customer care. They don’t communicate with us, they don’t let us know where they are regarding fixing the update. I rather hear them say that the problem is so severe it will take them a month to fix, than not saying anything at all.
As soon as Android releases a new OS, they should work as fast as possible to release that OS for its customers, and for all their phones.
Just like Apple releasing new iOS versions to the majority of their devices, except the really really older phones.
Next phone will be either Windows Phone or back to Apple. The only reason I tried Android was because I loved the idea with torrent, and how easy it is to share everything on my phone, and how easy it is for me to write down notes with my pen.
Why does my samsung battery drain the longer I charge it? My battery totally died on me yesterday so I bought a new battery a few hours ago. And now the same thing is happening again!! I’m so upset!!
Is your phone updated to android 4.3?
No its still the old version 4.1.2. My phone is a samsung s3 mini. I checked for software update and it says thats the latest update 🙁
I have a Galaxy S3 and did the system upgrade 2 days ago. Is this the same thing that would be on the S4? I hate so many things about the new upgrade and I want to change it back. One seemingly small thing that’s driving me up the wall though, does anyone know if there is a way to turn off the camera light on the alarm/notifications but still keep the LED light on the front active?
Gone with Apple iPad this Xmas cos of the way samsung handled my S3. Never again a samsung product.
I have samsung galaxy s4 and I am trying to update it but it is not getting updated and is showing a warning as process failed
Please, save yourself from horror.. DO NOT UPDATE AT ALL… My battery life won’t get past 4 and half hours, phone sluggish and lots lots more bloatware comes with it something called Beem services or something keeps updating and annoying me.
I have the galaxy s4 I updated it and had problems with the phone freezing and Google play not responding. I rang customer services who told me to do a hard reset after this it has been working perfectly since
Here’s what I emailed Samsung:
I loved my phone before this latest update, but now I hate it.
My battery life has been roughly cut in half.
Before the update, my battery almost always lasted all day. Now it’s maybe half a day, if that.
Without battery life, all the other wonderful features are worthless.
The Samsung tech support guy also admitted that he lost a lot of
battery life on his S4 and suggested that I turn off a lot of the features that
I bought the phone for and that worked just fine before the software update.
He and the AT&T people also suggested such ridiculous things that
it may be a problem with the phone or battery.
It’s not. It’s the firmware. The problem happened exactly when the
firmware was updated and I haven’t changed any other settings.
Another issue is that the update installed without my permission. I would not have installed it, but I went to
use my phone and it was in the middle of installing somehow by itself. I never gave it permission. Good thing I wasn’t trying to call 911.
I was told by the Samsung tech and the AT&T tech that the best
option was to try a factory reset. Are
you kidding me? That will take hours to
back up all my data, reinstall everything, figure out all the passwords,
etc. It’s almost as bad as reinstalling
windows on a computer. NOT a good option,
and the people on line who were complaining about this same issue that did try
the reset said that it only worked for a few days and then the battery life
dropped back down again.
Imagine if you bought a new car that got 30 miles per gallon and then
the dealer “upgraded it†and now it only gets 15 miles per gallon. How would you like that? And then the dealer says, maybe you need some
new tires. Or what if he said, why don’t
you spend half a day taking the engine out and then putting it back in, maybe
that will help.
I don’t cuss, but if I was the sort of person who did, I’d say F**k
You, I’m going to buy my car somewhere else from now on and I’m going to tell
everybody I know and on line what Samsung did to me.
Used the S4 after using the iPhone for several years. The S4 died after 4 months. After my contract runs out, it will be back to the iPhone.
After paying $700 for a phone I expect a lot. Looks like my next phone will be an iphone or HTC. If Samsung would at least own up to the issues like battery drain I would be fine with it. But to just ignore the users because they are more concerned with the future S5, well apparently they’ve forgotten who will be buying it, us, the S3 users. Bad business if you ask me.
I have a galaxy s4.. And last night without permission it updated.. And besides coming with 1gb extra bloatware (1gb less space with apps I’ve disabled),… My phone now only have a 4 hour 27 minute battery life…. Goodbye Samsung.. You lost a loyal customer.. Always had Samsung since I got smartphones, now I’ll stick to the Google Nexus ones (oddly usually made by Samsung but Google force no bloatware.. And they usually work a LOT better for it)
*Cough Get a Nexus *Cough. Either that or put CM on it. Samsung phones are terrible and their popularity can be directly linked to their huge advertising budget. LG may have screwed up a bit in past, but their current phones are amazing and worth the cash.
Another VERY IMPORTANT thing worth noting is that specs don’t mean crap if the device is not properly optimized. E.G. A smartphone from 2010 can have an offer far better functionality and performance than a current gen phone if it is properly optimized. Specs are just advertising in today’s smartphone market, nothing more.
I used to LOVED my phone. I even used to brag about my Note 2, but after this damn update, my battery dies way too quickly and my screen keeps waking up every 15 seconds! Also, losing 1 go of memory to useless apps is absolutely absurd to me. If this doesn’t get rectified, this might just make me finally switch over to Apple.
I am enjoying the update. Battery life doubled , evrrythings works faster too. I am using gn2 btw. Mayb u guys are just the unlucky ones
Stay AWAY from Samsung. Idiot system
Guys, i’m so annoyed and p*ssd off with this new OS update from about 2 days ago. I’m using a Galaxy Note II, and since the update my phones had all sorts of issues. Draining battery, my texts are displayed in huge text and I can not make it go back to normal. soo annoying. my phone is freezing and has become slow, also, i hate the new themes and layout. SAMSUNG pull your finger out, my daughter is laughing at me as she is an iphone girl, lol
My Samsung S4 is no longer a mobile as it needs to be plugged in whenever I access Facebook or the phone’s gallery. When the battery is fully charged and I access Facebook or the gallery, the battery lasts all of ten minutes and then turns it’s self off. Phone is absolutely useless, I could through it. Should have bought an iPhone
I have two issues with my recently updated Samsung Galaxy S3 that i cant find solutions to. One is my ‘!’ and ‘@’ have been swapped. I use exclamation points often and now im sending texts with @ at the end instead!! Also when I search for a solution with google, every page i open opens a new tab. Suddenly i find myself at 13 tabs open! I seriously want to throw this phone across the room!
I just got sucked in. Until now, updates on my Note 2 were pretty simple, almost no-events but JB 4.3 is very annoying and I haven’t even got the worst problems people mention here. It’s as if my phone was hijacked by gremlins.
I’m not sure how much of it is caused by Samsung and how much of it is Android itself. Pretty disappointed, though.
Samsung Galaxy Note II problems after update 4.3.
– Battery Drains very rapidly
– Screen Freeze too often
– Many App malfunctioning or not working at all
– Increase in Dropped calls
– Increase in Undelivered text messages
– Bluetooth completely gone
– Back speaker completely dead after attempting to activate Bluetooth, phone changes sound to front speaker after device is connected to another Bluetooth device (HandFree link or Portable speakers)
– Microphone Stops working after the device has been linked with another Bluetooth device.
– Wi-Fi connection connects for some time and then is gone.
This is very frustrating. As much as I Love Samsung devices I am very disappointed with all this problems. Definitely considering Apple products. Please fix this issues, like me, many customer will change to other competitors if this is not resolved.
My Galaxy S4 was updated 2 nights ago without my permission while I slept.
– It changed all of my apps from “never update” or “update only in wifi” to a single “update anywhere” and then proceeded to update all of my apps without my permission and ate half my monthly bandwidth. They literally hijacked my phone and stole bandwidth. Now I no longer have the ability to tell some apps to update. It is all or nothing now.
– The update occurred while I slept and changed the time on my phone so my alarm went off an hour late. What if this happened on an exam day? I NEED my alarm and accurate time keeping.
– I have 2 Message Apps. Go SMS. Pro and Messaging. Before there was no problem using both. Now when I try to reply to a Go SMS. Pro popup text it won’t let me reply unless I change my default app, and then when I go into Messaging it won’t even let me see texts without changing the default. Why does the default even matter? It’s not like it impacts anything.
– and speaking of messaging, it now has this really annoying autocorrect that I cannot turn off. The only way for me to prevent it from changing why right is to put a period after that. SMS. gets changed to SEE. If it isnt in the approved dictionary i can’t say it. I HATE IT! AND it introduces a huge typing delay. Typing used to be the only way to avoid voice texting errors. Now typing is even less accurate.
– Battery drain is VERY bad now, and the battery color was changed to white which looks weird. Also, when the battery gets low it shuts off the functionality of certain apps which weren’t shut off before.
– Google Search still works, but if If I read results out loud it will create a new search which is annoying.
… and I am still discovering the bugs…
I’m locked into a contract for another year and a half so I don’t have a choice right now, but I am NOT going to deal with this for another freaking year. I demand a downgrade option. Everything worked, and now nothing does. I called AT&T and they blamed Samsung. I called Samsung and they blamed Google for making it in and ATT for pushing it. I called Google and they just said there was nothing they can do to help me. No one seems to think it’s a good idea to force update on people and take away a downgrade option. I’m inclined to file a lawsuit against all three parties to force them to give me a freaking downgrade option.