This is the first time I'm reviewing a product in my blog in English. This is mainly because of the massive hate I had through the time I owned the Samsung Galaxy W and want to express my feelings in common language that many more people can understand. - Galaxy W is "The Wicked Galaxy" in my words. In fact I am not a "hater guy" especially at this blog. I am trying to review the products I like to write positive words but you will now see below why I write and negative review even in English.
It was about a year ago(may be a bit more than one) that I needed a new phone. Since I was an proud Nokia N900 user, my first intention was to buy a Nokia N9 with Meego OS. But Meego was just an another Maemo which I already had in my N900 with limited app support. I am not an app fanatic but there are some common apps that I use a lot which the Nokia Maemo/Meego OS's do not support partially or fully. And since I'm not an Apple fan boy iPhone was never a choice for me that times. All these reasons made me think of buying a new phone with Android OS. That was the times that Galaxy S2 was a star smartphone and all the reviews were comparing Galaxy W and Galaxy S2. The common understanding was nearly the same for all the reviewers: Galaxy W was the best mid range phone closest to the "mighty" S2. Since S2 is the other worst smartphone of Samsung, I can now clearly understand how close they were!
After watching too many videos and reading to many articles about the "best mid-class Samsung phone" I decided to go for a Galaxy W, the worst phone I had. The second worst phone was also a Samsung, the U600. I thought "How slow can be a mid-class smartphone with 1.4 Ghz proccesor?" Now I can say that TOO SLOW! All the rumors were about a upgrade to Android 4.1.x version will be available soon to make the phone even better. But after "enough phones were sold" Samsung announced that Galaxy W will not get an 4.1.x upgrade. It still did not. Think of a smartphone still using Android 2.3.6 OS. After all that "inside rumors" this is so classy Samsung, well done!
The first problem i realized was about the Contacts. Even with a few contacts with a brand new phone, it was too slow that i took more than 5 seconds to get into Contacts. And even Galaxy S3 and S4 users still complain about this annoying lag. When you want to make a quick call, the phone nearly freeze in trying to open just Contacts. Nearly all Samsung users were complainig about this so I didn't care too much.
But then came a more annoying error: The camera failure! Camera was constantly crashing and no matter you do, you can not recover it without restarting the damn phone. (BTW the phone is ULTRA slow in beginning and shutting down too) At first I didn't care too much but when I want to take a picture of an rare object/situation the crashes began to made me feel more and more pissed off.
When I searched the net for some info I saw that it was not just me. People from all around the world was having problems, exactly the same problems about the Galaxy W. When I read their reviews all the common problem solving methods were the same. Get the phone to the service, they see how slow it was and try to hard reset it or reload the OS again. And nothing was changing. That's why I did not get my phone to the service, I was enough pissed off and I did not want to have that annoying after sales conversations.
I started to write to Samsung about my complaints via e-mail/global Facebook/Twitter pages and all the same with local Turkish Samsung pages. All I got was an auto-answer from the e-mail telling me to get my phone to service.
Then I decided to record a video about how slow was the phone. You may see my video above starring in best UX ever. I've send this video to the same pages to just get an answer and Samsung DID NOT REPLY ME AGAIN. Hi-tech devices may have problems. And there may have several reasons for these problems. This is not the case. The case is Samsung's careless and disinterested approach to all these unhappy customers. If every user of your one series phone are complaining about your product, you SHOULD at least answer their questions. If you act like "Fuck off" the only reaction you get will be the "You Fuck off!" words. I believe that many people literally crashed/smashed their phones. If I had not need it that much during my usage period I would surely hammer it down until now. Do you think the problems are over? of course NO!
When I bought the phone I knew that the mid-duty 1500 mAh battery would not last much long, that's why I bought an original replacement battery from Amazon.co.uk. I know how to use smartphone batteries at optimum conditions. But just before even one year, both of the batteries began to last just 4 or 5 hours! You may see a screenshot above, with nearly nothing done with the phone, the battery could not finish 5 hours. I canceled all the screen animations, deleted all the music, unused apps and so on. thought I had a solution.
While trying to replace my battery today, I realized that the original battery which came with the phone was swelled. Yes it has a belly and a curved back. If you click the picture above, you may see the curves on both sides clearly. You can turn the battery on the table as if it is an spinner!
That's enough Samsung. We hate your low quality "smart"phones and your terrible after sales services. I replaced my N900 with a HTC One two weeks ago and I am extremely happy with my choice. I will NEVER EVER buy a phone (or any other product such as TV, white consumer goods etc) from SAMSUNG again.
Come on people, let the world hear your "Galaxy W stories" too!
