Oct 9, 2019

Disappointing phone at a lucrative price

HERE'S MY REVIEW OF SAMSUNG GALAXY M30s
I bought this phone during the Amazon Great Indian Festival Sale in Sep/Oct 2019. I had not been purchasing Samsung phones since the past 5-6 years due to their low value-for-money over Chinese companies like Xiaomi, Huawei and Realme, but got interested in this phone after watching tons of positive reviews on YouTube, and considering the price at which Samsung was offering these specs.

However, the phone has turned out to be a major disappointment after using it for 2-3 days. Let's go over various aspects of this device one-by-one.

BATTERY (3/5)
The battery of this device seems to be highly overstated. So much so that my 1-year old Honor phone with 3750mAh battery with an inferior processor and an inferior display gives me a better backup than this phone. I would estimate the actual battery capacity to be closer to 3000mAh than to the stated value of 6000mAh. You can see the battery percentage drop every 2-3 minutes as you use the phone, even with moderate brightness and simple tasks like browsing or reading news.

FINGERPRINT READER (3/5)
The phone comes with a physical fingerprint sensor on the back. Even 3 years ago, these fingerprint sensors used to be extremely fast and accurate. This phone's fingerprint sensor is extremely inaccurate and works only after 2-3 attempts. It's evident that Samsung has cut corners even in the most basic aspects.

DISPLAY (3/5)
Even though Samsung claims the display is a sAMOLED, the viewing angles are pretty bad. If you try to view the phone display from the side, you'll immediately notice significant color distortion. This is most clearly noticeable when the display is showing a white colored background.

STORAGE (3/5)
Even though Samsung claims this phone comes with a fast UFS 2.1 based storage, there's a significant delay saving 48MP pictures. The slow saving speed is closer to what you'd get with an inferior eMMC storage rather than UFS 2.1.

CAMERA QUALITY (3/5)
I took some pictures in broad daylight and found issues with sharpness of the pictures, even when properly focused and camera resolution increased to the maximum allowed 48MP. Even the portrait photos (which Samsung calls Live Focus) are a hit-or-miss. Need to play around with the camera more, but the initial impression is disappointing.

SOFTWARE (3/5)
Samsung's One UI is filled with numerous bugs. At the time of writing this review, it is 9th October already, but Samsung hasn't moved beyond 1 August Android security update. Also, basic things like a convenient shortcut for taking screenshots is missing in One UI. The local search (which Samsung laughably calls Finder) is terribly slow and inaccurate.

OVERALL RATING (3/5)
This phone is a big disappointing. It's sad to see Samsung using fake specifications to lure potential buyers. This strategy may boost Samsung sales for a short time, but will wean away customers from Samsung permanently.

WHERE TO BUY THE PHONE FROM
Even though we wouldn't recommend that you buy this phone, it is available for purchase from Amazon.in: https://amzn.to/35kcd9u
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Aug 31, 2014

The Great Xiaomi+Flipkart Scam

Flipkart.com – India’s top e-commerce portal made a history recently by announcing that they’ve managed to sell about 95,000 Xiaomi Mi3 phones through an exclusive deal with the Chinese manufacturer.

As per the deal, only Flipkart.com are allowed to sell the phones in India. Flipkart priced the phone at a super-attractive price of INR 13,999 only.

Flipkart.com and Xiaomi partnered together to create a lot of hype around the phone by claiming that the hardware specs of the phone match those of high end phones sold by other vendors like Sony, Samsung and HTC but priced more than twice of Mi3.

As per the figures shared with media, Flipkart have had 4 or 5 flash sales of the phone through their website. Each sale requires interested buyers to pre-register on Flipkart.com. When the sale starts, only pre-registered buyers get a chance to book a phone by clicking on the “Buy” button.

Typically every stock of phones (between 15,000 to 25,000 pieces) gets sold in a couple of seconds. I managed to buy a phone myself in a flash sale in which 20,000 phones were sold within an unbelievably short time of 2.4 seconds (i.e. 2400 milliseconds). No other product has ever managed to get this kind of traction in India.

However, very soon media started reporting that a significant number of buyers started experiencing all kinds of issues with their phones. The numerous problems that were reported by the media (see references below) include:

  1. Non-functional microphone during voice calls
  2. Defective SIM tray
  3. Defective main camera resulting in faulty pictures
  4. Loose micro-USB port affecting data transfers
  5. Overheating while using the phone
  6. Dysfunctional wall charger
  7. Cracked display
  8. Phone getting stuck in infinite boot loop
  9. Disappearing phone logs and contacts
  10. And potentially more issues

What’s more, as per media reports, affected people kept calling Flipkart support and tried to avail of Flipkart’s 30-day replacement guarantee, but Flipkart kept rejecting replacement requests on one pretext or another (see references below), further frustrating the already unhappy customers even more.

In my case, my phone stopped working after exactly 1 day of use. I experienced a non-functional microphone during voice calls. Which means that I was effectively blocked from using the phone. I did the following:

  1. Logged a replacement request with Flipkart
  2. Waited for 4+ days for Flipkart to verify my request
  3. When Flipkart made no effort to contact me, and took no action on my request,
    1. I made a call to Xiaomi customer support
    2. Tried various steps suggested by Xiaomi support, like
      1. Increased call volume to full, and
      2. Ran the hardware test on the microphone
    3. None of the above steps helped
    4. Xiaomi suggested that I bring my phone to their service center
  4. However, since Flipkart has a 30-day replacement policy, I wrote on Flipkart’s Facebook page requesting them to respond back to me.
  5. They got back to me on the same day and asked me to reset the phone to factory default. Also, they rejected my replacement request.
  6. I did as told by Flipkart, but it did not solve the issue. So I logged a fresh replacement request on Flipkart.com
  7. Again, I waited for 3 days for Flipkart to verify my request. They did nothing. No e-mail (except the auto-generated one), no calls, no confirmation – absolutely nothing.
  8. In-between I chatted with a customer service representative online, but he/she reassured me that I need not worry. Flipkart would solve the issue. I just needed to be patient.
  9. Finally, after 3+ days of waiting my patience gave up. It took about 7 or 8 tweets and a similar number of posts on their Facebook page to wake up Flipkart from their slumber.
  10. Wake up they did, by rejecting my replacement request yet again. Without any explanation. Without any confirmation. Without any action.
  11. Finally, I called up customer support and asked them exactly what was Flipkart up to. Instead of acknowledging the issue and refunding the money to potentially thousands of unhappy customers, they are hiding their face in sand like an ostrich.
  12. After this, I got a call back from Flipkart in which they agreed to replace my phone. I told them that I have absolutely zero confidence in the quality of the phone – since I’ve seen other Mi3 customers in my office face numerous issues with the phone, so I’d prefer a refund instead. However their customer representative told me that they are unwilling to refund the money and the best they can offer me is a replacement.
  13. “But what if the phone malfunctions again?” I asked. “No problem. File a new replacement request” – came their reply. Amazing. Just what a frustrated customer would have loved to hear.

From what I’ve seen at my co-workers who’ve bought the same phone, to the numerous online reports – suggests that what Flipkart+Xiaomi have done in India is nothing short of a big scam. A racket. Nobody knows how many out of the 95,000 phones they’ve sold are defective. In absence of any concrete figures shared by Flipkart+Xiaomi, I am inclined to believe that the number of defective phones could be anywhere between 10%—20% (i.e. approximately 10,000 to 15,000 defective phones).

What should Flipkart/Xiaomi do about this? I expect them to:

  1. Publicly acknowledge the issue. Being honest will help restore customer confidence in their website
  2. Publicly share the actual number of defective phones sold
  3. Immediately issue 100% refund + some compensation to all affected customers
  4. Recall all defective units and don’t resume sales again until the root cause is identified and rectified

Their current stand of refusing to admit the issue and not refunding money to affected customers amounts to nothing short of dishonesty/cheating.

References:

  1. Will defective units, poor service put the brakes on India's Xiaomi Mi 3 excitement?
  2. Xiaomi Mi3 Becomes a Nightmare for Customers, Horrible Flipkart Support, and Product Quality
  3. 1-star and 2-star reviews from certified buyers on Flipkart.com

Customer Complaints:

Post by Jubin Joseph.
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