Samsung Galaxy Tab Active Pro 10.1 (2019)

I'm done with Samsung – I bought a Samsung Active 4 Pro rugged tablet, so that I would have a device I could use in the bath occasionally. I'd used the tablet while in the bath, perhaps a half dozen times for an hour or two. After using the tablet last night, I woke up today to find the screen flickering, and bars across the screen, and distorted areas, all consistent with water damage.

I'm now dropping my tablet off for diagnosis. Dealing with Samsung support was miserable. They made zero commitments as to whether they would honour the two year warranty. Both tech people spoke legalise jargon that made it perfectly clear the purpose of Samsung's warranty is to figure out any way possible to wiggle out of repairing the device under warranty, at their expense. They made it clear they would not cover the warranty if my device had been used inappropriately. They said they had sensors to detect if the device had been exposed to a dept of greater than 1.5m. This device has never even been submerged, much less could it be submerged 1.5m in a bathtub.

Technically, I guess my device is "water resistant" at IP68. So I suspect they will try to wiggle out saying it was not "water proof". Well here's a clue. Don't call a device rugged and say you can submerged it for 30 minutes in 1.5m of water, if you're not going to cover warranties for devices used in said conditions.

I'll post an update regarding how my warranty claim went. But regardless, this device should not have failed under these conditions. And the whole warranty process has left a bitter taste. One should reasonably think if a product fails under warranty when used as specified, it should be covered. Instead, this just feels like a roll of the dice, and whether they will figure out a way to wiggle out.

My Samsung S4 phone screen shattered within a month of ownership from being in my pocket. My Samsung TV was repaired twice due to bad capacitors, and then died at 10 years. And now my Active Pro 4 has failed. My LG fridge got rust with one year of purchase, and the ice maker seizes up all the time. All the LG tv's we purchased have horrible light bleed and light consistency, 1 of the 3 TV's screen has turned mostly blue.

I am done with Samsung. And I am done with LG, and Korean electronics in general. Literally, just about everything I have bought from them is junk or fails quickly. Samsung can literally design and fabricate processors, is one of only three companies on leading edge production nodes, the other two being Intel and TSMC. Samsung is a giant, vertically integrated Korean champion. What I don't understand is why they choose to ruin all this, by creating cheaply built, unreliable products, knowingly, and then creating a warranty and support process, that attempts to pin all the blame on the customer, when their junk inevitably fails.

I am no Apple fan. But my next tablet will probably be an ipad. Their power cords for their old Macbooks were literally built to fail, because they would not put proper reinforcement into the cable, because Apple thought a bulky plug would look ugly. But with our household having owned a dozen Apple phones and tablets, literally not one has failed of its own accord. I have had two Macbooks fail, albeit each was at least 7 years old, and both could probably have been repaired, though wasn't really worth it for old tech. I hate Apple's locked down operating system though, and it designing software assuming customers are idiots.

My next tv will be Sony or something Japanese. I guess my next tablet will be Apple. I know devices have become more advanced and complex then ever. However, I am extremely sick of this race to the bottom on quality, and the atrocious warranty process of Samsung. I really don't suspect conducting business in this manner actually boosts profit margins long run, as I surely cannot be the only customer who has been burnt repeatedly, and will never purchase another Samsung or Korean electronics product.