[omonra]

I've been a loyal Samsung owner since S3. Didn't upgrade to S6 because they dropped removable battery. Was waiting to see if it's brought back with S7 - it's not.

Will be getting this phone as an upgrade. For me removable battery and SD Card in a flagship phone are a must. Then comes camera quality, then price.

[namocat]

I was in the same boat as you (loyal Samsung owner, still using my trusty S3) until a few months ago when I decided to go for last year's LG flagship, the G4, and I gotta say I've been extremely displeased with LG. Particularly, the way LG Mobile has handled the many problems that have plagued the G4.

Apparently, catastrophic bootloop failures of the G4 were such a widespread problem, that a petition has so far gained a couple thousand signatures [0] to get LG to officially recall the bricked phones. I personally experienced the bootloop of death on my G4 only a couple of months after getting it, and their customer service has been atrocious - even refusing to fix my phone after they've now admitted its due to a known hardware defect [1] because mine was the international, unlocked version. So, just a heads up to beware LG's "Caveat emptor" practices.

[0] - https://www.change.org/p/lg-mobile-launch-a-replacement-prog...

[1] - http://www.androidauthority.com/lg-admits-g4-bootloop-proble...

[omonra]

Thank you.

Funny enough I experienced a similar issue with my S4 a few years ago. One day it just died - no messages, no nothing. Completely out of the blue, no falls or anything.

I took it to Samsung repair, they sent it off and returned it to me in a few weeks. I looked on the forums and apparently it was a fairly common (ie thousands of people affected) issue. Same reason - a random hardware chip malfunction that manifests itself after 6-9 months of use.

I think this was the issue: http://forums.androidcentral.com/telus-samsung-galaxy-s4/380...

So basically I think any manufacturer can fall prey to this - a faulty component that takes months to manifest itself.