I have been counting the days since @SamsungJohn promised help. I have included @Samsungservice, @Samsungtweets, and @MetroPCS in each day's count.
On Friday, at day 4, @MetroPCSNY contacted me wanting my issues to not reach day 5. I send him an email:
I received a response rather quickly:
Well I really wasn't surprised to not get an email on Monday since, if he was reaching out to each department that covered each subject, it would take at least one full business day. As I suspected, I received an email today:
My reply:
On Friday, at day 4, @MetroPCSNY contacted me wanting my issues to not reach day 5. I send him an email:
Hi!
Let me bring you up to speed. The Samsung Indulge is a battery hog. This, in itself, is not the problem. A smartphone with a 1Ghz processor is expected to drain the battery at a faster rate than say a Blackberry with a 250MHz processor.
The problem that I, and a lot of others as evidenced by androidforums, howardforums, acsyndicate, and others, have is that we have to force the phone to run in 1xRTT mode in order to get more than 2-3 hours of battery life out of this thing. We have discovered that we can "kill" LTE better than any cut by entering **583385## in our phone's dialer and force the phone into CDMA only mode. This ensures that the key problem with the any cut "toggle", the 4g turning back on after a phone call event and sometimes even an sms, does not happen. After this selection we have to restart the phone. In other words, this is not a quick "toggle" and go method.
With the phone forced into 1x I am able to, with further help from the Juice Defender app, squeeze about 5-6 hours out of one battery before the phone shuts itself down. This is after apps that run in the background no matter if you want them or not, or crap as I call it, that both Samsung and MetroPCS installed without the ability to remove, outside of rooting the phone, have been eliminated. This is how long the battery should last with 4g not forced off... In other words, the phone straight out of the box since we are paying a premium for 4g service we can't really use much.
Other owners have been hounding Samsung, as I have, for a fix in the form of a 4g toggle as found on it's sister phone, the Epic, that holds even after a phone call or sms instead of "airplane mode". I still can not figure out why Samsung put a quick toggle for airplane mode when it's not breaking news that the LTE antenna and software guzzle battery life.
The other issue is that there are no drivers for the Indulge on Samsang's website. This would not be so big an issue if Samsung was willing to support their own product as drivers are generally the first thing released. Drivers are needed for development of the phone itself and it really is beyond me why they have not been even given a date for release.
I contacted @SamsungJohn, a code developer at Samsung, four days ago and had a conversation with him that obviously left me less than impressed. I requested help, as other Indulge owners have done for months. All I got as a response was that they would look into it. You should not have to still "look into it" months after the problem is brought to your attention.
I'm sorry to tell you but Samsung's failures are highlighting MetroPCS as a bad carrier. And what's worse is MetroPCS stood against their own customers when they, in fact, shunned and insulted Indulge owners who decided to take matters into their own hands and start fixing Samsung's mistakes themselves. A notation in our records? Is this the road MetroPCS really wants to go down? "The customer is always wrong!"?
MetroPCS should have stood with us, their income source, and demanded Samsung provide the support they owe us and fix their problems. Not stand with Samsung and demand their customers deal with Samsung's crap.
Feel free to share this as well as my email address with corporate. I am more than happy to answer questions they might have.
I received a response rather quickly:
Hi Vance:
Thanks for your email! It's going to take me some time to give answers or
at least explanation to you issues. I did want you to know that I'm not a
dealer or some external group. I work with the marketing arm of the NY
region but am able to touch all points of the company.
Let me work on your email and get back to you by Monday at the very
latest.
Thanks,
Tony Wisniewski
Indirect Channel, Social Marketing and Digital
MetroPCS New York Region Marketing
Well I really wasn't surprised to not get an email on Monday since, if he was reaching out to each department that covered each subject, it would take at least one full business day. As I suspected, I received an email today:
Now you know. Metro PCS is sorry. To make up for it, they will gladly sell you a new phone...Hi Vance:
Thanks for waiting, here’s what I have for you. Unfortunately it’s mixed news, but I hope it will give you a some of the answers and insight you are looking for.
First, you are absolutely right that the Indulge is a battery hog. Nobody will question that position, but know that the Indulge is much improved over our first LTE phone, the Samsung Craft. We do know that the LTE chip requires significantly more power and that the handset vendors are working toward improvements in subsequent phone offerings. You will see better battery life as the LTE framework becomes more widely used and offered by all carriers.
The LTE toggle you recommend is a great idea and is being weighed as an option both by Samsung and MetroPCS. Please understand though that the phone was never designed nor intended to be forced into CDMA mode. It is first and foremost an LTE based handset and provides dual-band capabilities should you find yourself in an area where LTE is not available. MetroPCS does want you to drop calls as you move from one location to another.
Unfortunately, as a consumer, once you enter the programming side of the handset by entering the password codes, there’s not much we can help you with. I appreciate that you have found a work around for the LTE toggle, but there’s no guidance MetroPCS or its handset vendors can provide to consumers relative to firmware programming. The programming access codes are intended for service providers to assign the phone it’s MEID and MIN codes for system alignment.
With regard to driver updates on Samsung’s website, you are unfortunately not going to find them. Samsung and MetroPCS engineering groups work together to design the firmware and test it on our network. Because it’s not strictly a Samsung product being offered directly to consumers, they wouldn’t make firmware upgrades available from their website. Remember too, that the LTE programming is outside of the Android OS which means that any firmware upgrades would need to be delivered to the handset via a PC running an upgrade software client. This is not a problem for a user of your knowledge, but not all MetroPCS consumers have the ability or computer hardware to manage the process required for firmware upgrades. As a precaution, MetroPCS (and all carriers) do not provide this level of manageability to their handset users
I know, the iPhone is the one anomaly in this position, but Apple designed it as a computer first and a cell phone second. What you are upgrading when you connect to your computer is not the cell side of the phone, but the iOS. The cell phone operating firmware remains unavailable to consumer upgrade (unless you jailbreak, yes, but then we’re back to a situation where as a consumer, you are on your own).
I do apologize for the lack of customer support you have received when calling into our system. It’s simply that you are far out ahead in knowledge of the handset and the LTE network. You are asking questions that don’t have answers yet J.
I’m sorry that I can’t provide you the solution you are looking for, but please know that MetroPCS is very aware of your concerns with the LTE battery drain and are working on several fronts to combat the problem. These include not only firmware revisions in next gen product, but also a continued build out of the LTE network so you won’t have to force the phone into dumb mode. Please also know that there are several more LTE products coming from MetroPCS, and from varied handset vendors. This will work to benefit you as competition on their level, always assures a better product offering moving forward.
I hope at least that I’ve provided some insight to your concerns. Please feel free to reach out at anytime and I will do my best to provide you with whatever information I can.
Thanks,
Tony Wisniewski
Indirect Channel, Social Marketing and Digital
MetroPCS New York Region Marketing
cell
fax
Twitter: @MetroPCSNY
My reply:
Thank you for your reply.
Unfortunately, I can not accept that MetroPCS and Samsung are going to ignore the problems of the Indulge simply because a majority of users are not fluent in linux. If that was truly a valid excuse cell phones would have never gotten out of the bag. When the Omnia first came to Verizon I bought it and, after only a couple months, had to perform a software update, through my computer, in order to update the os. The other option was to bring it to a Verizon store and have them perform the update. So not all carriers think that their users are computer illiterate.
I ported from Boost Mobile to MetroPCS to buy the Indulge. I am not looking at fu ture models for MetroPCS. I am looking at the model that I paid $400 for and $60 a month to use.
Features and Specifications - Samsung Galaxy Indulge? QWERTY Cell Phone | Samsung Mobile
You will find that Samsung claims that this phone, a "first and foremost LTE based handset", has a 300 hour standby time and 3 hour talk time. Actual product use has found this claim to be extremely far fetched, and possibly false advertising.
"The LTE toggle you recommend is a great idea and is being weighed as an option both by Samsung and MetroPCS."
What other option could Samsung and MetroPCS have? They have produced a complete lemon of a phone that can not even last for 3 hours on standby, never mind talk time. Does there have to be a class-action lawsuit in order to get the support that Samsung claims to provide to, and I quote @Samsungservice, "help all Samsung US customers"?
I can understand why Samsung is ignoring us. There are really only a few options with manufacturers and we are not their customers, MetroPCS is. I can't understand why MetroPCS is ignoring us. We, the people who bought the Indulge from you, are your customers. There are a lot of carriers, prepaid too, that would love to provide "wireless for all".
For each and every Indulge that Metro sold they have one more unhappy customer. There is no way that anyone would accept a 3 hour total battery life or the excessive heat that the LTE antenna produces as "the way it should be".
Want to show every single Indulge owner that you do actually care? Stand up and let them know. Make a public statement in support of your customers. Tell Samsung that your customers are not happy and want their phones to work like they, the manufacturer, said they would. MetroPCS has all our addresses and MetroPCS knows exactly what phone we are using on the network. Hopefully I'll get a letter soon letting me know what Samsung and MetroPCS are going to do for me to correct this problem.
Want suggestions?
1) $150 trade in for this piece of shit, to be used whenever the consumer wants
2) Get rid of the $60/month plan for the Indulge and put everyone on an unlimited $50/month plan to make up for the fact the phone can't use LTE all the time without the battery being dead in a couple hours. You can leave the $60/month plan for your next LTE phone that doesn't need us to force it into CDMA or carry a stack of a dozen batteries to make it through the day.
3) Give your Indulge customers $150 credit for their monthly service charges. The goodwill of showing that you care about our pockets as well as yours would be enough to retain enough customers to more than make up for the bill.
The faster MetroPCS lets their customers know that they will take care of their customers, the less those same customers will think about other carrier and their phones. The only thing I can do is let you know you have a problem. It's up to you, as MetroPCS, to fix it.