Samsung shipped me an I9100G in an I9100 box. Six weeks later I got the real one

So finally!! Last Wednesday I walked out of Samsung’s service office in Nehru Place with a sealed Galaxy S2. A REAL GT-I9100 this time, which is exactly what the box I bought in January said I was getting. It took about six weeks of mails, calls, complaint sites and a LOT of angry tweets, and for most of that time Samsung’s official answer was a big fat no.

I’m writing it all down now coz plenty of people bought the same phone I did, and some of them are still stuck where I was a week ago. So guys, this one is for you :)

The box said I9100

I bought my Galaxy S2 from a Croma store in January. A 30k phone. The box said GT-I9100, and nothing on the box or the bill mentioned a G. The phone inside? A GT-I9100G.

I found out the simple way: Settings, About phone, and there it was in the model number.

If you don’t follow this stuff, that one letter gets you a different phone. The I9100 runs Samsung’s own Exynos chip with a Mali-400 GPU. The I9100G runs a Texas Instruments OMAP chip with a PowerVR GPU, which is almost the same hardware as the Galaxy Nexus. Same name, same body, different insides.

Now I’d have lived with a different chip if the phone worked properly. Mine didn’t:

• It couldn’t play a full HD 1080p video in the browser.
• Music playback would hang. Nothing like playing music in the car over AUX and having the phone go zzzz mid-song :-/
• Every few photos the camera threw a “camera failure” error, and the only fix was a reboot.

And then there’s ICS. Samsung had committed to Ice Cream Sandwich in Q1, and the regular I9100 was already better off on that front. Q1 ended and the G got nothing. So there I was, stuck on Gingerbread with the variant that was supposed to be “equivalent”. Yeah right.

And trust me, I wasn’t alone. A bunch of us G owners found each other on Twitter, and there’s a whole Facebook group full of people who got the same G in the same box.

The letter

Around the second week of April I mailed Samsung India about the fraud of selling a 9100G in a 9100 box. On 26 April a letter came back. It’s dated 21 April and the subject reads “Regarding Replacement or Full Refund for Samsung Galaxy S2 GT-9100G”. The body says they “cannot replace the handset as per our service policy”, and if I’m facing a technical issue I can visit an authorised service centre.

The refusal letter, which I posted to the other G owners a few days after it arrived. I’ve blurred my name and address, the query number and the signature.

So no replacement, no refund, and please take your phone to the same people who sold you the wrong one. Wow. Just wow.

Fighting on every front

Over the next four weeks I tried everything I could think of, mostly all at once.

• Mails. By mid-May I had a log of more than 16 mails to Samsung, plus countless calls. I mailed Samsung India’s CEO too.
• Akosha, the consumer complaint site. Filed there around 6 May. On 11 May I asked another G owner, who I understood had got his replacement through Akosha, how long it took him. On 19 May I told Akosha I was getting bad vibes about mine, when they had already solved nine cases exactly like it!
• Consumer court. A couple of days after the letter came I asked the other G owners if we should file a case if Samsung won’t replace or refund. Later I told Samsung the same thing: I had the mail log and the calls to show as proof in consumer court.
• The media. On 20 May I asked the Times of India and Hindustan Times for help with the “consumer harassment” I was facing from Samsung.
• Twitter. A LOT of it. “@Samsung_India is the #worstaftersalesservice” was one of the politer ones ;)

What got to me the most was watching other people get exactly what I was asking for. By the end of April I’d seen four G owners in two days post pics of their replacement phones on the Facebook group, while Samsung was still “processing” my complaint. Every. Single. Day. So on 17 May I asked them straight up: if replacements are being done all over India, why not me? I paid in full too!

On 21 May I put it as plainly as I could. They shipped me a 9100G in the box of a GT-I9100, without mentioning it on the bill or the box, and that’s cheating. Period.

Meanwhile, I rooted it

Obviously I wasn’t going to sit on stock Gingerbread waiting for Samsung to wake up. By the end of April the G was running a custom ROM with a custom kernel. I’d reset the binary counter with a USB jig and had a full ClockworkMod backup of the original ROM, so going back to stock was always one restore away. Warranty woes? Didn’t scare me much :P

Before handing it in, I did exactly that: restored the stock ROM so the service centre got the phone the way it left the box.

Wednesday, 23 May

Got a call in the morning to come and collect my replacement. I rushed straight to the Nehru Place service office, and within an hour I had it in my hands :D

At the counter my line was simple: I just want the I9100, the model the box is of. That’s it. When another G owner asked me what to say, I told him to expect about five minutes of argument before they confirm the replacement. Same approach had already worked for a guy on the Facebook group.

What finally did it? The mail to the CEO. The call came after that.

A few things I found out while I was there:

• I’d asked for a refund. No chance. You get a replacement and nothing else.
• I asked for a white one too. Only black was available :(
• I got lucky with the timing. According to the person I dealt with, they had stopped entertaining any more of these complaints. If that’s true, I got in just before the door shut. Phew!

The new phone came in a sealed box. Manufactured in February 2012, shipped with Android 2.3.6 against the 2.3.3 on my old one.

Of course it didn’t stay stock for long ;) That same afternoon I was downloading Resurrection, a pure Nexus-style ICS ROM which I like better than CM9 (I did a CyanogenMod 9 preview back in February). By Saturday morning I was also on Paranoid Android, a hybrid ROM with both the tablet and the phone UI, running as a secondary ROM in dual boot on the Siyah kernel.

The replacement’s home screen on ICS, the day after I got it, and YouTube’s tablet layout on the S2, which I tweeted on 26 May as “YouTube like a boss”.

On Saturday someone asked me about rooting and whether it’s risky. My pitch: you get ICS before it’s even released, you can block ads on your phone and change the boot animation. And if it were that risky, I wouldn’t have tried my odds on a 30k phone, right?

And then, #TalkAwayS3

You’d think I’d have had enough of Samsung for a while. Nope! Four days after the swap, Samsung India had everyone finishing the line “I would … for you, Samsung Galaxy S3” with #TalkAwayS3, and between about 3 and 5 pm yesterday I fired off roughly 60 of them. A sample of what I’d apparently do for a Galaxy S3:

i would Stop #Rooting my Phone for you because you are perfect Samsung Galaxy S3 #TalkAwayS3

i would never Troll at the xda forum for you Samsung Galaxy S3 #TalkAwayS3

i would now say Bbye and study for my exam tomorrow for you Samsung Galaxy S3 #TalkAwayS3

Not my finest two hours, lol. And no, I’m NOT going to stop rooting.

So what did I learn?

Check the exact model before you leave the shop. One letter in the model number can mean a different chip, and nobody at the counter is going to point it out to you.

Samsung’s first answer isn’t its last. The letter was a flat no on 21 April, and a month later they handed me a sealed box for the very same complaint.

Keep a log. I had more than 16 mails and the calls on record, ready for consumer court if it came to that.

Find the others. Without the group of G owners I’d never have known replacements were happening at all, or what to say at the counter.

The S2 is a great phone. Now I actually have one! \m/