Smartphone Search

My Samsung Galaxy 5 is out of warranty and is acting very WONKY.

I'm wanting to buy an unlocked smartphone that will work on the Verizon network.

Do we allow smartphone sales here and if so where can if " shop "?

I'm pretty much done with Samsung after 4 replacements all having problems.

Any suggestions for an alternative manufacturer? My first smartphone was an HTC EVO 4G and I loved it but it lacked internal memory for current needs and usage.

Thanks

 

If it is out of warranty, you can ROOT it and get it back to working well. The S5 is an excellent phone.

 

Further to what MaxTurner said I would try doing a factory re-load on your S5. I've got a S5 and I've done a factory re-load which made it good as new. http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/factory-reset-galaxy-s5/

 

What hitest said.

That kind of full reset is actually what Verizon support had me do once when I called them about issues with my S5. A surprisingly large number of issues that seem like the phone itself is bad, are often due to OS corruption. the reset does a reload of the operating system and as with computers, that fixes nearly everything aside from broken circuitry.

 

To All responders: I always appreciate help from people who actually participate in/on help forums. I do try to help whenever I KNOW what I'm talking about. Not so long ago that was fairly often especially with people in person vs here on a help forum where the humble side of me realizes that those people like you guys know more than I do so what do I have to say besides a peanut gallery yell out.

In any event, I wasn't sure about the selling of phones here. I think the Android forum allows sales of working and not working phones as "BRICKED" phones often have parts that can help fix a phone that needs parts which if purchased new from the manufacturer are crazy in $$$$.

I'm buying a NEW LG. I'm creating a new email address for the new phone. I'm not using anything from the old phone on the new phone.

I'm going to try a factory reset but only after getting and setting up the new LG. If the reset works I will attempt to sell the S5 since it is less than one year old and it looks perfect in every physical way.

If the factory reset does not work I plan on using the S5 for a youtube video

Once again I want to thank you all for your help!

 

I would be surprised if the re-set didn't work. I think that will work just fine. You're restoring your phone from a trusted back-up in my opinion.

 

I've been using Samsung for a few now, never experienced any problem with it. try to root it

 

I got a new LG and the sales/the person at Verizon " told me " an interesting story. And like most interesting stories these days I find that the operative word: " interesting " has many faces. So this story is that new LG that I have is in essence displaying some of the things I heard years ago about AI. If AI is to work it has to " learn " from humans vs being programed by humans. In this instance I'm told that my new phone takes a few days to study my behaviors and hangouts including the place I call home. Once it figures that out and I suppose other familiar places it also in essence assigns value to those places making the " home " and the more familiar places groom itself to working better with those towers than any random tower along the road.
Remember, I said " interesting story ". That said I most definitely noticed an improvement in the quality of the phone's interaction with the tower and with me over one week-end at home with my new phone. Add to that this unbelievable battery life of nearly 3 days on, on standby, and in use before charging. Charging took 2 hours and 20 mins when at 24% remaining.
Okay, I'm not ready to ask for it's hand in marriage but after that nightmare experience with my Samsung Galx S5 anything had to be better that it.
Then something starts going wrong and " the stories " start coming at me from the company with whom I'm having a problem. I would like to start or see if anyone had the same idea to start a thread about " the stories " told by the voice that answer 611 or if you know that most of those voices will ask you to call them back from a different phone to their 800 number and just call that number forst ( I THINK ) it goes randomly to the same places that 611 go to which can be anywhere. I will not say that like Time Warner after their merger that all calls were routed to the Philippines; not that I have anything against foreigners handling tech calls from the USA except after all the fuss made during this past presidential election revolving around JOBS being out-sourced I think along with a thread on " stories " another thread might be interesting to hear about those outsourced calls to some foreign land where I've actually asked how much they get paid. No one has answered my direct approach but why else take a US call and route it to someone who may or may not speak clear enough English to understand why you are calling and to resolve the problem. I did get one very eager Pilipino who after reading all of the notes on my account, himself was outraged by the run-a-round I had been getting. He REALLY thought that he could help me. I absolutely loved his optimism but told him I would be surprised if anything would come of his willingness to speak with one of his supervisors.

[ See how easy it is to get off on long winding roads of calls that after a while seem to have their own personality that is " deplorable ".
But as an old Bell Labs person I look at the problem and come up with my own idea about what might be causing these issues and I think that, as was the case with Bell Labs, an engineer would listen to an installer if that installer presented logical thoughts about problems that because well known with-in the building that I worked in. In fact one engineer had me tell an other engineer my thoughts about a problem that was happening for well over a week and pencil and paper with mathematical numbers and symbols seemed not to lead to resolution but words can be reinterpreted into symbols which is what the three of us did during the grave yard shift in the coffee room. I wasn't an engineer but my ability at 19 yo to fix just about anything seemed to carry over to the first ESS building in the world. In fact I was told the our windowless building that was sided in BLACK marble or maybe it was some other black stone that could be cut into sheets and polished to look like a finish on a car. It was a very strange looking cube of black on an acre lot or so with very well maintained GREEN Lawn, beautiful old oak and maple tree's and trimmed with multi-colored Azalea's that made the building POP in the spring and stand out buried in the white snow drifts of winter.

Ma Bell wanted this place to be it's crown jewel for the new age of communication. It is still in operation and the next time I'm in NJ I'll take some pictures and post them here if anyone is interested.

But I digressed as I often do when thinking about who I get to a place. The problem that the engineers could not seem to solve was solved by an idea I had about when to and how to change these wired circuit packs that were failing much too quickly and redesigns which were time consuming, costly, and often didn't work were solved by me with this little idea that happened as I gathered information over time about when the boards failed and I focused my solution on the possibility that the when may have had more to do with the failure than the parts that were used at first then remade with heavier duty parts which not only failed also but took out a few other boards that were not falling before. " Jack " the main engineer in charge of this part of the project.

If it wasn't Jack that I spoke to about the problem and if it wasn't the midnight shift my solution may never have been allowed to be tried. That my idea fixed the problem lead to Jack campaigning for me to go to school so I could get in at the beginning of this work.

I was young and never a great student. The teachers told my parents I thought about " girls and cars too much " and many of them talked about " applying myself.

Now can I tie this together here about the problems I've been happening? I think I can if the length of this post doesn't defeat my purpose.

It does seem like the new LG is getting to know me and that may help solve part of my problem. But a default setting may be spreading the disease. The information that is gathered on me and my use with this phone are stored " in/on the cloud and I'm starting to think that is part of the problem. When I get a new phone that information is transferred back to my new phone and if there is a bug in the data the bug reinitiates the problem from the old phone to the new phone. I'm pretty sure I see one of the problems in simply accepting those settings.

I have 2 weeks to get a brand new phone on a trade in, no questions asked. I'm doing that tomorrow but in the mean time I registered my phone with LG so I'm going to attempt a letter to them explaining the problem(s) and my theory why this is happening; no across phone manufacturers.

Please let me know if you think what I said makes sense and what you think about my stories thread

 

I'm going to try the " reset " after I check to see if there is possibly something on the Samsung that I want to save. I'm told that " the cloud " can handle most of what I may want saved. I was also told that I can use a USB and transfer stuff that was only using a cable I can pick each item and put it into a folder on my laptop. As soon as that is done well see if it works. Then Samsung has tech at Best Buy so I can take the phone up to them and see if they can figure out what is wrong and fix it while I wait. Of course if that doesn't work I can send it back for yet another exchange and here is one of the reasons I think I keep having problems. They take my phone and send me a refurbished one. Between downloading all of my stuff back to the new phone ( possibly a big hiding out somewhere in the data. Or a bug from the refurbished phone that may have been missed, there is no way of know for sure why I have had 4 failed S5's in less than 2 years. But my extended Warranty runs out soon so if the reset works great if not I need to get it in for a replacement or try to sell a phone with problems.
If I get a fresh new S5 I'm thinking that it might bring in $200.00 or so. Does that sound reasonable for a virtually brand new s5?

 

Yes. Anything you don't back-up to external storage or to the cloud will be gone when you do the factory re-set.

 

If it is out of warranty, and you ROOT it, you lose no data and it will work perfectly. Why make life complicated? The S5 is an excellent phone. Buying a 'new' second-hand S5 wouldn't be my idea of a good option but money down the drain.

 

Max,
The S 5 is out of factory warranty but the extended warranty from a company called " Square Trade " is still good until Feb 12th.

and in reply to this " If it is out of warranty, and you ROOT it, you lose no data and it will work perfectly. Why make life complicated? The S5 is an excellent phone. Buying a 'new' second-hand S5 wouldn't be my idea of a good option but money down the drain."

I want to clarify: this current S5 is my 4th replacement and is less than a year old and it looks BRAND NEW. I already purchased an LG Stylo2 to replace the S5 which I now own. So my thinking was to remove my stuff and try a factory reset. Verizon will allow me to switch the service back to the S5 so I can test it to see if the wonkiness goes away. If it goes away I want to SELL it. If I need to use the extended warranty to fix it then I will do that so I do not sell a phone with known problems. But I do not need 2 Verizon phones so selling it seemed to make sense to me. How much it will bring is important. Square Trade wants a $50.00 dollar deductible. So ideally the reset will fix the problems.
Is there a place or a forum that I can access to "ROOT" the phone? Will that help in selling it or only serve me if I reconnect to Verizon?
Does the phone need to be " unlocked " before it is " ROOTED "? There seems to be many phones these days that come " unlocked " back back when I purchased this S5 ( 2012 ) few phones came unlocked.

And as an update: someone at a Verizon store somehow got all of " my stuff " off the S5 and transferred to the cloud. That said it is puzzling to me that a side by side comparison of my LG and my S5 IS NOT the same. Since the clock is ticking I have to decide if enough transferred of if I can find an app or piece of software that will strip all data from the S5 and download it to my computer.

Are you aware of an app or a program that will allow me to take EVERYTHING off of the S5 so I can hit Factory Reset and not worry that I am losing something important that is hidden in an obscure folder somewhere?

Thanks for your thoughts and help!

Kryp

 

Use MyPhoneExplorer.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/myphoneexplorer.html

 

Sounds like your best plan is to use MyPhoneExplorer to transfer all data to your computer. Then do a simple factory reset as advised earlier (not rooting it). If it then works fine, sell it (though I'd be very surprised if you got much more than US$100 even if it is mint condition with everything, eg accessories). Rooting it would only be if you were going to keep it for your own use.
If it doesn't work fine after a reset, get Square Trade to fix it but if you have to pay an excess of $50 for that not sure it's worth it. Only you can judge that.

 

Yes. https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s5

Probably not.

Root it only if you need something specific and there is no other way. It won't make the phone work better. It's a security risk like going online with an Administrator account in Windows.

No. 'Unlocked' refers to carrier unlocked, which makes it transferable between the various providers.

 

Just to clarify:
I wouldn't recommend rooting that device unless you personally need to use it and a reset doesn't solve the problem. But as you have confirmed you don't want to use it, then a factory reset is the best option.
For older models of that range that are past any Android updates, rooting is actually very useful to remove much of the bloat that was on it at purchase which affects both internal memory and makes using an SD Card much harder and often impossible. There are very divergent opinions about rooting and even though one person will say 'don't do it! it makes your phone insecure' there are more opinions that show with evidence the opposite. I have a back up phone (Samsung Galaxy S2) that is rooted because it will never now be updated by Samsung - even though they said 2 years ago it would be and it still hasn't been - and simply wont allow app updates because the memory was full and it wouldn't allow the majority of apps to be used on an SD Card, effectively making the phone USELESS. It now works as well as my un-rooted Samsung Galaxy S4.