Samsung with this knox rubbish have pushed me away from being a customer.
"How did Samsung go from employing CyanogenMod’s Steve Kondik and providing hardware to the custom ROM community to this sorry state?"
Because they started making money and now they want to make more money. With custom roms customers tend to keep their devices longer than Samsung wanted to, so they're loosing money.
I have also had the issue of my phone not working correctly.
I have had this phone since May 2013 when it was released, I upgraded from an S3, before that I had the S2. I loved the S2, the S3 in terms of looks wasn't an upgrade but the hardware was, when I upgraded from the S3 to the S4, I actually thought what have I done... The S4 is a bit better on paper, but most of the sales gimmicks Samsung use in this device, I never use! I actually disable them to stop them from eating battery or consuming processing power.
It started off with the device at the beginning of Dec acting weird and entered itself into a factory mode. The symptom was when you press the power button you do not have the extended power menu and it immediately shuts down. Another point is when you turn the phone off, any Wi-Fi point that you have connected too is no longer stored on the reboot.
I reported to Samsung on the 3rd Dec with the device returned on the 9th Dec with a letter explaining the problem. The first repair completed by Andy was not successful - I can only assume the letter was never read. I received the handset back and returned it to Samsung again explaining specifically over the phone the problem again and this time I thought it may have been repaired correctly. However to my extreme disappointment when I received it Thurs 2nd Jan2014 yet again the same problem is found with the phone when received back after "Simona" had performed a successful repair along with the Samsung Smart Service Checklist Completed (is this a paper exercise or actually followed)! I then had to return it again, with my phone still being in factory mode after 2 attempted repairs.
This has now left me without my handset for 6 weeks and I find this completely unacceptable. I have had to buy, out of my own pocket a S2 off ebay to tide me over whilst it was in for repair. I still haven't got the phone back and I am hoping to receive it tomorrow (17th Jan 2014), but this isn't guaranteed. To start off with I was impressed with their repair service, but this ongoing saga has left a bad taste in my mouth and ill feelings towards them.
I would advise people to go elsewhere for their handsets, Samsung keep reinventing the wheel and making gimmicky features half of the time you don't use because it consumes the devices battery being on. Rant over.
I will be selling my S4 when returned and hope that other people will take heed of this review, if you currently have an S3 and are thinking of upgrading. Go with the Sony Z1, HTC ONE, or even get get the Moto G which is £130 on Amazon at the minute and don't have to tie yourself into a long contract.
