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Help Samsung Galaxy S3 KILLS SD CARDS!!!!!!

Came to work this morning and woke my phone to play some podcasts and got the dreaded SD card error message. Nothing I do works. It's toast. BTW, it is an Adata 32GB card from Amazon.
 
shadowspawn said:
Honestly, I've spoken to a bunch of Verizon and Sprint reps about phones etc. From my understanding, of all the phones that had issues with them, Samsung phones, namely the S3, has been the one to have the most issues. Granted, it's also one of the best selling phones out there right now, but even at that, you don't see this many iPhones or HTC's with such problems.

Hell it was apparently so bad, the Sprint rep to whom I was discussing the S4 vs. HTC One vs. Xperia Z with told me to "stay away from Samsung". And honestly, I have to agree with him. Of the major players Apple, Samsung, HTC, and LG, Samsung phones have been the most commonly returned in my store so far. One guy had a Note with AT&T that would only boot into Odin for some reason. A lady had an S3 that would respond intermittently to touch interface. Others have had the aforementioned SD card issues. Others have had issues regarding data phasing in and out for no apparent reason at all.

@Britton: So far, it seems much more common on Sprint S3s than on AT&T or Verizon S3s. I have a feeling it's mostly because we don't sell as many AT&T S3s and that people get insurance from Diamond Wireless for their Verizon S3s here though. On AT&T we sell more iPhones than anything else and with Sprint's S3s dipping as low as $49, I'd say it's the most popular S3 flavor out there at our location.
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apple and HTC handsets dont have SDcard slots and while the LG optimus G pro will have expandable memory their currently available leading offerings in the optimus G and nexus 4 do not.

...sony?
 
THE W beat me to it. Most of the other high end phones don't have microSD cards. The Note 2 does though. I wonder how cards fare in that phone.

The Sony Xperia Z does - I remember being impressed that you can swap out the sdcard but it is still waterproof.

But also the sheer number of S3's sold is going to make the problem look S3 specific compared to other phones with microSD slots.
 
davoid said:
THE W beat me to it. Most of the other high end phones don't have microSD cards. The Note 2 does though. I wonder how cards fare in that phone.

The Sony Xperia Z does - I remember being impressed that you can swap out the sdcard but it is still waterproof.

But also the sheer number of S3's sold is going to make the problem look S3 specific compared to other phones with microSD slots.
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For the 835th time. I have N2, had the same problem and I am not the only one. :)
 
I just googled "sd card failure" and I seem to get A LOT of responses unrelated to the S3. These included photography and blackberry forums. As someone else here said many phones have done away with external sd and "no sd,no problem". Also many S3 users don't care about the feature and don't use it so they of course will not experience the problem. Still,many have bought the S3 for the feature so it makes sense that if there is a lot of card use there might be more issues.

As I said before,this happened with DVDr media from virtually every company producing it.Companies strayed from trusted factories all the time to get out batches that could be produced cheaply enough to allow sales at discounted prices. I've seen this kind of thing happen before.

Sandisk has already admitted fault.It makes sense as card density increases the required production processes would be more precise. This would make it even less reasonable for sd card makers to potentially sacrifice quality for cost,but everything's about price these days.

I respect everyone's input here and have learned much from the forum. On this issue,however,I'm still not convinced it's not a problem with defective batches from ALL manufacturers. Even so, it should be kept in mind that Sandisk is one of the most popular brands so reported incidences might reflect this. But it's not just Sandisk,not just Samsung,and not just phones that come up in my search results. I still may be wrong but Google "sd card failure" and tell me what you think.
 
well, again, it not only isnt strange that putting "sd card failure" would bring up a lot of S3 results, its to be expected since they have sold some 50 million of those things by now and they're the only popular brand that provides expandable memory.

though i must correct myself in that certain variants of the LG optimus G do in fact have expandable memory.
 
Actually Frostypawz said that googling "sd card failure" brought up a lot of results that were unrelated to the S3, I think making a point that there is a problem with sdcards generally.
 
SD cards as a form of flash memory are always gona be less reliable than local flash memory. The chips arent soldered in by people wearing paper chemical suit and hat with electro-static band round their ankle lol but if i cant have a phone with >64Gb internal storage OR fast, realiable, free data then ill take my chances with SD :D
 
THE W said:
apple and HTC handsets dont have SDcard slots and while the LG optimus G pro will have expandable memory their currently available leading offerings in the optimus G and nexus 4 do not.

...sony?
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Sony makes good phones but they're vastly under appreciated. Of all the people that walk into our store, I've only ever seen one Sony phone and it was the original Xperia. The dude didn't even know the name of the phone and claimed he got it for free from his friend since his friend had long since upgraded to an S3.

As per expandable memory, yes that is one thing that pretty much everyone has failed at in some aspect. HTC is very fickle as to whether or not they will include an SD card slot on their phones. For example, the international variant of the Droid DNA had an SD card slot while ours did not. The Chinese HTC One will also have an SD card slot while the rest of the world will not. The HTC First will have no SD card slot yet the HTC One SV will. Apple has never had expandable memory for whatever reason (probably to encourage people to get Macs) and LG is also fickle about SD cards. IMO, internal memory is far more important than expandable memory. Expandable memory is icing on the cake. Read/write speeds are way faster to internal, it's less likely to screw you over, and with all the automatic backup utilities offered through both Google and service providers, it makes using your memory card as your primary backup pretty much obsolete.
 
shadowspawn said:
Apple has never had expandable memory for whatever reason (probably to encourage people to get Macs)
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I think it's to encourage people to get iPods. That brings me to the main reason for having expandable memory - storing your music collection.

It's all about device convergence. Why carry a phone and an iPod when you can just carry a single device? Not as good for manufacturers like Apple who produce dedicated mp3 players, admittedly, but for everyone else it would be better.
 
Don't like using cloud services as I have to have a data connection in order to access files. I also like the fact that I can put my sd card with all my stuff in whatever phone that has a slot and don't have to spend more money on a phone with more on board memory.
 
Yeah. i know its Googles dream for us to use cloud storage but we arent ready for it yet. How many people have unlimited data? :thumbup:
 
Ive actualy only used 34GB this month 1365697541666.jpg
(I lie.... that big flat bit in the graph happened when i had to do a nandroid restore lol. Ive prob used double that) :)
 
After extensive reading of people reports and experiencing problems of my own, I think it is most likely the Galaxy S3 and not the cards. My suggestion is, do not trust the SD card storage on the Galaxy SIII, backup immediately and expect it to fail at some point. You can probably get your data off fine (I did) and use the card again, but I would not trust it.

I bought a Lexmark 16GB sd card and for about two weeks, no problems. A bunch of photos and videos was saved on the card.

Then, all of a sudden, "SD card unexpectedly removed" message came and went a few times, for a couple days. The card was still being recognized intermittently.

Then, the card became invisible to the phone. No messages, as if it was not there. No reaction from the phone to being removed and inserted, as if the card was bad.

I put the card in a computer SD card reader, and it was recognized and accessed with no problems. Thankfully, all my files were still there. I immediately copied the files to the computer. The card was scanned and no problems found of any sort. I believe Lexmark is off the hook there.

I reformatted the card in the SD card reader, using FAT32 option and Windows 8 Storage function under Computer Management. I then inserted the card back in the phone, and it recognized the card with no problems.

I will continue using the card in the phone, but, I am not going to trust it. I was lucky to get my files, but from my research, some are not so lucky. Best save your files off the card frequently.

I will post again if the problem reappears, or I get more info. On a side note, I am coming from HTC Inspire, and, with few exceptions, I liked that phone and the interface much better. The only things about S3 that I like are the screen size and the easily removable battery. In everything else, HTC was way better, IMHO. Plus, HTC Sense blows the default Galaxy software away. I had to switch providers so there was no choice but to switch phones as well. Damn the US cellphone business model :D:D
 
I came from a Sony which are really thinly skinned so at first i hated Touchwiz UI but ive got used to it and dont mind it much (had to rom it with a samsung based rom and mod the statusbar a bit though).
i havent played much with an HTC so cant really comment on Sense. Im defo not a samsung fanboy though lol and i dont use any of their "features" other than the notification bar toggles which i really like :)
 
Uhm, I'm not sure what features you're referring to, but as far as I've seen, no other manufacturers' overlays are comparable in terms of what they offer. They might be more pleasant to look at, but that's that. I love the Xperia Z UI, nice and clean. Sense UI is horrible, the pattern lock screen looks like the gingerbread one.
 
The features i meant are the S-apps, Multi-window, Smart Stay, etc mate. I know a lot of people love them though :)
 
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