S22 series "speaker gate"... can we talk about this?

[Darkneo89]

I am a "proud owner" of a Galaxy S22 plus and recently i discovered an interesting "feature": whenever the phone goes throug sudden temperature changes (eg moving from cold outdoor to hot indoor during winter) or air pressure changes (eg flights or even moving from plains to mountains and vice versa) the speakers starts to act weird, every sound is distorted making it impossible to make a phone call or play any media.

 

I seacherd the big ol' web and i discovered that many others (owners of galaxy s22 series, yes also S22 and S22 ultra) encountered this problem; some even recreates it putting the phone in the fridge for a couple of minutes (ye, I tried, it worked, it even started to do that while sitting in front of my car AC).

 

It looks like a lack of the phone internal "pressure compensation" is causing this, causing the speaker membrane to vibrate more than intended, in fact opening the sim tray or even using an high pitch sound generator (similar to the one used by smartwatch to remove water) is reported to solve the problem right away (if you don't have the patience to wait a couple of hours for the problem to solve by itself).

 

I went for a trip to the mountains (~1500 mt above sea level) from the plain where i live in 3 times and every time the bug presented itself.

 

I'm half amazed and half shocked that a 1000+ $/€ flagship phone manages to be so poorly engineered in 2022 and frankly i think that this could be really dangerous in some situation (eg if something bad happen during a mountain trip and you have to call the Emergency Services).

Of course samsung never recognised this as a flaw and never aknowledge this as an engineering problem. 

I am from Italy and class action here is not a thing, meaning that the only thing i can hope for is they accept my request to give me a refound after giving back the phone (very unlikely to happen, and i'm a bit mad because it is my very first flagship phone and i used to buy 350€ midrange phones in the past).

 

Anyone experienced this? 

Does Linus need to put a bunch of S22 series phone in the fridge and/or in a flight to recreate the problem and bash Samsung? (i think the answer is yes).

[HannahLewis]

In the EU you have a 2 year minimum warranty as standard for bought goods of which a manufacturer cannot deviate (EU Directive linked below). This means that if a bought product does not conform to the standard that can be expected from it, with normal use, you have the right to have it fixed or replaced. Your phone's speaker clearly has a construction error or manufacturing defect, meaning you are well within your right to contact the place where you bought the phone from and demand that they take it in for RMA.

If the problem on your current phone cannot be fixed the store is required to provide you with a new phone (same model) or reimburse you. Make sure you go to the place where you bought the phone first as they are required by EU law to deal with this stuff and should have a dedicated department for warranty claims. If they are unwilling or uncooperative (which unfortunately happens sometimes) you can then directly go to Samsung.

 

In some jurisdictions, you as a consumer after some time (depends on the EU country) may have to prove that the defect existed when you first got the phone but I think with all the videos online of people being able to replicate the process it must be fairly easy to prove it's not your handling of the phone that caused the defect.

Good luck   

 

 

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:31999L0044&from=HU

[Vishera]

2 hours ago, Darkneo89 said:

I'm half amazed and half shocked that a 1000+ $/€ flagship phone manages to be so poorly engineered in 2022

That's because $AM$UNG takes it's customers for granted.

That's why they also remove useful features like headphone jacks,micro sd card support,

Removable batteries,charger and earbuds in box,etc.

 

There are a lot of people that buy these phones just because it's $AM$UNG...

[Darkneo89]

4 hours ago, f1ght43v3r said:

......

Good luck   

 

 

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:31999L0044&from=HU

Thank you so much for your reply, you have been very informative and helpful. I already contacted samsung directly (i bought the phone from the samsung online store) and they are already trying to understand what is going on with the speakers problem (i gave them all the links of online discussions and videos about regarding the topic and the customer service lady was pleased by my research, she said she made some research herself and found many other proof of the bug). They said I may have yo bring my phone to some authorized tech shop so they can certificate that there is no software conflict nor evident hardware malfunction... I am not really incline to this solution, but i guess once they find out everything inside the phone is "as intended" I will have no problem getting a refound.

3 hours ago, Vishera said:

That's because $AM$UNG takes it's customers for granted.

That's why they also remove useful features like headphone jacks,micro sd card support,

Removable batteries,charger and earbuds in box,etc.

 

There are a lot of people that buy these phones just because it's $AM$UNG...

 

Ye I suppose i jumped into the Samsung boat with a really bad timing, I was so enthusiast regarding S21 lineup and i though "what can go wrong with S22?", well shoot....

[voyager_]

6 hours ago, Vishera said:

 

That's why they also remove useful features like headphone jacks,micro sd card support,

 

That is the very reason why my s20 ultra will be most likely my last Samsung phone, I constantly use the micro sd card when traveling. I often don't have service and a 512gb card holds all of my music and a bunch of tv/movies. I have been a samsung fan since my s8 and have been very happy with them up to this point.