SGS2 Visits Samsung Service Centre

My Samsung Galaxy S II had a problem with its display: there was a yellowish tinted circular spot, roughly the size of a 5-cent coin, near the lower left edge of the screen. The spot had probably been there since the beginning, but I only started noticing it about 2 weeks after I bought it. I heard about the issue from forum postings. The yellowish tint is obvious against lighter shades of a plain background, so it is not something that ordinarily screams out of you right away. But once you know the problem is there, it becomes quite an eyesore.

So for some time, I’ve been contemplating sending in my SGS2 for servicing. I was hesitant about claiming on the warranty because:

1. As always, once I’ve gotten used to the phone, I’m rather reluctant to change to some other phone while that one gets serviced. I’m assuming, of course, that usually the servicing turnaround is a couple of days (but as I subsequently found it, it was pretty quick for Samsung).
2. My SGS2, erm, has had unofficial kernel loaded and the tainted counter is non-zero. I haven’t gotten around to buying the USB jig to reset the counter.
3. I was thinking if the the yellowish tint would be a bearable defect. It doesn’t look nice, but it doesn’t affect the performance of any functions of the phone, and it didn’t really get in the way of usability anyway.
4. I dreaded the idea of having to visit any mobile phone service centre, after plenty of bad experiences trying to get my Nokia phones serviced in the past.

I’m a perfectionist in some way. Eventually, (3) above became decidedly unacceptable. The screen needs to be changed. I was going to be the Orchard Road area yesterday, and thus planned to drop by the Samsung Service Centre at Plaza Singapura in the evening.

On a weekday evening (although the eve of a Public Holiday), the Samsung Service Centre was relatively quiet. There were people there, just not all that many of them. That’s good. I took a queue number. In less than 5 minutes, I was called to the counter. I thought about Nokia Care Centres: 15 to 20 minutes to get a queue number, then maybe another 2 hours before my number is called for my turn at the counter.

The service representative who served me wasted no time attending to my complaint, verified the problem with the screen, consulted someone at the backend, and came back to inform me they could change the screen right away, and have the phone ready for collection within two hours. Or, I could come back another day. I was quite surprised by the two hour turnaround time.

Just out of curiosity, I asked about pickup and delivery options. I read from their website hat some fee was involved, but it had referred to other categories of products, not mobile phones. It turned out that for mobile phones, there is no pickup option, but there is free delivery available.

I chose to wait the two hours to pickup my phone the same evening. After loitering around Plaza Singapura for 1.5 hours, I decided to try my luck and returned to the service centre early. I picked up another queue number, and in less that 5 minutes wait time, was called to the counter. My phone was ready for collection. The whole front of the phone was changed. (I’m not sure if the AMOLED screen is actually inseparable from the actual top surface of the screen… but I had imagined that they were separate components.)

Really nice. I’d say, definitely better than my experiences at Nokia Care Centre.