Samsung Galaxy S3...SD Card Issues

[Wilksey]

Hi,

I don't expect to "repair" this as it seems to be an inherent problem, but I have had the Samsung Galaxy S3 for about 3 - 4 years now, and it has always had a Samsung branded (bought from a reputable shop) which came from an older Samsung phone, and around Feb it started saying that the SD card was unreadable and it wasn't mounted, the phone is running 4.1.1 stock ROM, never modded this one.

So, I thought it was the SD Card as it wouldn't read it on a PC etc, so I put in a 32GB Kingston class 10 (I had it for a camera) and it seemed to be OK, anyway, 2 weeks later it started saying the same thing about the SD card being unmounted, this Kingston card had worked fine for the last 6 months, and now it had stopped working, odd, I took it back to the shop and said it stopped working and they replaced it as it was less than a year old, few more weeks went by and the same thing happened again!  I started noticing that the battery had now drained where as it would before be on around 75% at the end of the day, it was now on 4%!!  I replaced the battery, the SD card still didn't work, so I ignored it, the battery continued to drain to 4% each day for a few days, I took the SD card out and now the battery is down to 75% again at the end of the day.

I am guessing some kind of short in the SD controller is causing this to fry the SD cards and drain the battery?  It's not a massive issue i'll just leave the thing without a card it has 16gb internal memory which is plenty anyway, just thought I would share my experience in case anyone else had similar issues!

[Grapsus]

Hey,

It may be a crappy repair idea, but it's better than nothing: by connecting the SD card data pins to the phone and the card power to an external power supply, you could determine (by watching the battery drain like you did) whether the fault is caused by the power or the data signals. If it's the SD power that's at fault, you could find another point on the motherboard to source 3.3V and power the SD card from there by running a jumper wire. Although it may not be easy to accomplish from a soldering point of view.

[Wilksey]

Hi,

The SD card is dead, tried it in several readers, and I really don't want to take the phone apart to get to the pins on the main board just determine what the fault is, maybe when I upgrade the phone, the new SG S6 doesn't have an SD card slot, so they've already eliminated the issue!

I don't need to use the SD card, I just wish it didn't kill it stone dead!

[senso]

Dust/corrosion/crap in the SD-card socket, try to clean it, inspect it under strong light, squirt some IPA/flux-remover, contact cleaner might ruin the finish of the plastic.

[Wilksey]

I did think that, I had a good look and sprayed some air first, then some IPA and let it dry, but looking further it appears to be a "common" issue with the S3 

[Lightages]

There are many common issues with the Galaxy S3. This one phone has put me off buying another Samsung for a long time.

[codeboy2k]

My S3 started shutting itself off after 2-3 yrs of use. I had to keep turning it back on.. then one day it wouldn't start up at all..

Me, being the engineer, tried to figure out why... lots of googling and download Samsung tools shows that the S3 had a problem with it's internal eMMC chip.  I'm not able to flash it, read it or boot from it anymore. Dead.  Some of the flash is still readable I think, but the tools available from Samsung won't let me read just one section of the flash. For example, I think the data partition is still good, just the OS partition is dead, because I cannot boot and cannot reflash that section.  But the tools don't seem to let me read just the data section.   I need to get at it via JTAG, but I've not had time to do that yet.

I can still boot from the recovery partition, so I think I can make a custom recovery partition, flash that, and have that custom partition try to read the data off my (dead) phone.

In the meantime, I bought a LG G3 now , and it's having WiFi issues.  It won't stay connected, whereas my S3 never had any WiFi trouble whatsoever.  Same router at home here.

Grrrrr.

[Wilksey]

Saw the new S6 and S6 edge, it's a nice phone, but very very expensive and huge!

I haven't had any other issues (yet!) with the Samsung, my older HTC used to shut down, and now that just sits at the white HTC screen, so I don't really want another of those.

As I say, it hasn't caused a massive issue, I never really used the SD card, was more concerned about the battery drain, wondered if something was shorting out, it is literally using 70% more battery when the SD card is inserted, phone works fine without the card in, in terms of battery life etc.

The S5 is massive also, I know several people with S5's, strangely, all of them have broken their screen, which put me off as they are all usually careful with their phones, with the S4 not being much different I guess i'll stick to the S3 until it really does die.

[Psi]

How do you mean your LG G3 wont stay connected?
If it drops the WLAN for any reason it should just reconnect the same as it would if you walked out of range and back in.

Does it have the same issue on other peoples WIFI?

[Rigby]

There are many common issues with the Galaxy S3. This one phone has put me off buying another Samsung for a long time.

Why?  It certainly isn't common in other Samsung devices.  It's probably a hardware bug that can't be fixed EXCEPT by new hardware, and your strategy is to avoid the new hardware?  Please explain.

I have a Note 3 and a Note 4 and they both have been treating everything connected to them internally or externally very well.  No issues.

[codeboy2k]

How do you mean your LG G3 wont stay connected?
If it drops the WLAN for any reason it should just reconnect the same as it would if you walked out of range and back in.

Does it have the same issue on other peoples WIFI?

It does have the same issues at other WiFi locations, yes.
It just drops.. pops a toast message "The Internet Connection is unavailable" and things don't work.  I have the 3G/LTE data disabled because I don't want it to use the carrier's data network.

When I get that WiFi message, I have to turn off the Wifi , then turn it back on, then it reconnects.

It may have had multiple errors , disconnects, reconnects, etc in the background leading up to this point, then reached some limit and locked it out.  I don't know. That's just what it seems like to me.

It's most annoying because I work out of home, so I am usually at my home WiFi, and I never had this issue with the Samsung S3, just the LG G3 is doing this to me.  I'm usually within 10-20 feet of the router, and it just drops.

[Lightages]

There are many common issues with the Galaxy S3. This one phone has put me off buying another Samsung for a long time.

Why?  It certainly isn't common in other Samsung devices.  It's probably a hardware bug that can't be fixed EXCEPT by new hardware, and your strategy is to avoid the new hardware?  Please explain.

I have a Note 3 and a Note 4 and they both have been treating everything connected to them internally or externally very well.  No issues.

My phone killed a few SD cards, the micro-USB connector became unreliable after 7 months and replacing it caused more problems as it does not work at all anymore. The firmware has been buggy and the forced updates from Samsung has made it worse and chew up batteries faster. The back plastic cover is fragile and from the need to change batteries more often has cracked and I have to replace it. It has shut down randomly without me knowing and I have lost some important calls. I am not the first person with some or all of these problems. The fact that a $500 item can have all these problems and become useless after 1-1/2 years is an indication that Samsung is pushing out junk and don't care for the end user, the waste of resources, and for sure not their warranty. Yes they are a big corporation trying to grab all the money they can and they have shown that this is their real worry, not the customer.

http://www.droidista.com/2014/06/Samsung-Galaxy-S3-Problems-Solutions-Index.html
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/galaxy-s3-problems-what-users-complain-about-the-most/
http://www.gottabemobile.com/2014/06/26/android-4-4-2-problems/
http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/samsung-galaxy-s3-found-to-be-the-most-fault-prone-phone
http://forums.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-s3/366602-samsung-galaxy-s3-not-recognizing-sd-card.html
http://forums.androidcentral.com/verizon-galaxy-s-iii/304542-galaxy-s3-damaged-micro-usb-port-charging-issues.html

I don't think I need to go on.....

[Rigby]

I wasn't saying that the S3 was perfect, I was saying that newer hardware revisions (newer phones) don't have this problem.

I am asking why you have shunned newer hardware when it is known that the newer hardware does not have this problem.  I would think that newer hardware is what you would want.

[Lightages]

http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/samsung-galaxy-s4-problems/

I am not saying that they haven't improved, but there are still some big problems. The fact that Samsung made such a shit phone and then didn't do anything to help all those affected leaves me wary of buying Samsung again. I would be stupid to buy the "next best thing" from a company that was selling junk in the previous version without any statistics on the new model. It is called being cautious about getting ripped off again.

[Monkeh]

http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/samsung-galaxy-s4-problems/

The only issue on that list I have ever experienced is the camera difficulties, and that never happened with stock firmware.

Mind you, there are several essentially unrelated devices called the S4, and like most less than informed sites, they don't bother to specify which device.