The Samsung experience

2025-12-19

Samsung managed to screw me over three times. And it's completely my fault because I burned my hands twice, and after the second time, I swore that I would never buy a Samsung device again. But the Fold 4 triggered such a strong urge to buy that I thought I might try it again. Oh boy, what a mistake.

We start at the beginning

My first contact with Samsung was the Galaxy S5 back in 2015. The device itself was good, but I was very, very disappointed because it broke right after the warranty period (literally days later).

The second time was after Samsung decided to stop supporting Linux containers with a new Android update. They had supported them in the old version, and this feature was a major buying reason for me initially.

Now, fast forward to 2020. Foldables had been on the market for a few years, and I naively thought that within the warranty period, I should be safe owning a foldable device from Samsung. So, after days of thinking about it, I decided to give the Fold 4 a shot. Samsung had a good trade-in deal for old devices, so I sent my old tablet to them.

The issues started happening before I even received the device...

Just for clarification: I paid 1.5 thousand € for this Fold 4. Only to set the whole experience in context.

So, I ordered the Fold 4, the original case, and the S Pen directly from Samsung and I waited... I waited two weeks and then I logged back in to find out why my device hadn't shipped yet. The site said the device was in stock, but not the case. I had to contact Samsung to ask them to please send the items individually. Which they did.

After a few more days of waiting, the Fold 4 arrived. I checked the shipment status of the case again, and it was still not in stock, so I canceled the case and ordered the same one elsewhere.

I have to tell you that the Fold 4 was good; I already wrote a separate article about owning a foldable device if you are interested. I won't go into the positive details here because this is a Samsung rant, and they already got their kudos in the other article.

The Trade-In Trap

After a few months, I got a letter from Samsung saying I should pay 150 € because my tablet (the trade-in) was in bad condition. I immediately wrote to Samsung support, stating that I had pictures and could prove the tablet was in pristine condition. After a few messages back and forth, they agreed it was a mistake on their part and I didn't have to pay anything.

BTW: I checked the Google ratings of the company that handled the trade-ins, and it turns out that this company tried to "degrade" the device values for a lot of customers. You bet that Samsung did nothing about that...

The "Fever Dream" Repair Process

Fast forward to the end of 2021. I’d owned the Fold 4 for a full year and suddenly got a strange "bug." Every time I unfolded the device, the whole smartphone turned off, got warm, and restarted itself after a few minutes if I closed it. At first, this was sporadic, but after a day, it happened every single time I unfolded it.

So, I filed a repair request. This whole process was a complete fever dream. First, I couldn't find my smartphone in my orders because that whole site is a fucking SPA and there were no progress bars. You just had to wait 10–20 seconds until your devices showed up. Yeah, try to deal with that when you're in a hurry...

Long story short, my whole inner display was replaced by Samsung. I got my device back and was happy.

The Warranty Betrayal

Now, fast forward again a few months. Around 20 months of ownership. I live in Germany, so I'm still covered by warranty. The same defect happened—the exact same symptoms. So, I filed a repair request again. You bet that the same bug (waiting 10–20 seconds for the device to show up on the Samsung site) still exists...

Now, I'm quite a bit worried because I know this defect will return after the warranty period if it has already happened twice in such a short time. But okay, I thought at least within the warranty period everything would be fine. After sending in my device, I got an email asking if I "really" wanted to repair it because the replacement would cost about 600 €.

I replied to this quote saying that this couldn't be right because I have a warranty—even the big Samsung Care+ warranty. They sent some pictures showing that the device had some scratches on the side, therefore the warranty was no longer valid. I tried to argue that these scratches were on the side of the device and not on the display, so the defect wasn't caused by the scratches—especially since I’d had the exact same defect the year before. But they wouldn't argue; they just told me they wouldn't replace it for free and sent my Fold 4 back to me.

I can't find the words to describe how angry I was and still am. I paid fucking 1.5 grand for this piece of shit and now it's a fancy paperweight.

The Known Defect

If you are interested in the defect: There is a flex cable within the hinge that connects the inner display with the mainboard, and after a few thousand folds and unfolds, this cable breaks. Yep, the replacement cable costs just a few bucks, but you need to completely disassemble the whole unit, which is time-consuming and risky. This defect is known in ALL generations of the Fold.

I wrote a formal email to Samsung support describing the whole situation. I told them it might not be a good idea to piss off a long-time customer (Galaxy S5, Tab S4, Watch 4) who was able and willing to pay for such an expensive device directly from them. The answer was very short: those are the warranty terms, live with it.

Yeah folks, that's Samsung. I really dislike Apple and I'm the first one to rant about them, but one thing is for sure: this would have never happened with Apple. They know their customers and treat them well—at least regarding hardware defects within the warranty period.

So here I am again: I will never, ever buy Samsung again. They screwed me over three times and now I'm done. And I will do everything I can to talk my friends out of buying any Samsung products.