Rant 2 – Gorilla Glass My Ass - The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge
Episode 2: It’s Like the Lamborghini of Smartphones
Most car aficionados are familiar with the glory and pain of owning an 80’s Lamborghini. The style, the speed, the noise, and the unholy repair bills. A Countach is a spectacular thing, when it’s running, which I am under the impression is not very often. But it doesn’t matter because the experience it does offer far exceeds the cost of its shortcomings. It graced the bedroom wall of highschoolers the world over displacing nearly anything else of the era. I grew up loving the Countach. In a similar vein to my appreciation for Apple setting forth a goal for “ease of use” and hitting the bull’s eye more often than not, I love Lamborghini’s DGAF attitude. The Sant’Agata wizards make something that has an immediately apparent and overtly unique demeanor yet proceeds into the world as a knowingly flawed device.
The S7 Edge is a far less dramatic departure from the average than a Countach, being more reliable and well built (very much like a modern day Audi-Lamborghini; still pretty wild because it’s designed by guys that drink wine at lunch every day but pretty reliable because it’s built by guys who don’t understand the concept of fun). However, while the S7’s magnitude of departure from the norm pales to that of the Countach, there are still reasonably frequent moments where I curse my phone for having a personality. Most days performance is buttery smooth and the battery with a year of mileage is respectable, but then 24 hours later, it all isn’t, and there is no rationale as to why (or at least not one apparent to me as a tech savvy faux power user). On the whole, the average is high enough that performance gripes are really quite minor. However, one that isn’t, and will put 50 caliber hole in your wallet, is that goddamn screen.
Here is where the S7 Edge and Countach analogy really converges: that stupid curved “Gorilla Glass 4” covered display. Like the engine of the Lamborghini, if you need to replace the screen in the highly likely scenario that you screw it up, you had better bring your lube. On a device that costs somewhere in the $800 range when brand new to the market, a screen replacement costs an eye watering ~$300 compared to the typical ~$100 for anything else out there. As it was explained to me by a helpful local cell service shop, the curved glass integrates some of the LCD hardware to the outer glass meaning they are forever joined as one and must be serviced as such. There are no half assed eBay shortcuts to this, at least not if you’d like a good shot at your phone displaying colors ever again. For what has absolutely proven to be a total gimmick over my year of ownership, that is an insanely steep price to pay for damage to the screen. Now this might be an acceptable cost/ benefit ratio if the screen can double as body armor, but it can’t. I put a crack through the upper left third of the screen 2 weeks into owning it. With a case. Falling from my lap. Onto a clean, hardwood floor. I have never broken a screen in my life on anything and this cracked from 3 foot fall. As will be a trend with these posts and frankly should be expected given the context, I was furious. I stomached the crack for a year after that incident because it is fortunately unnoticable in use and did double as a perpetual reminder of my epic trip to Le Mans, France where I watched the Ford GT turn some Italian stallions into glue during the 24 Heures du Mans. Unfortunately, when considering trading my phone in for an S8, I came to the realization my phone is worth precisely zero dollars to Verizon with the crack. Hence the investigation into a new screen and the revelation it would be hellaciously expensive to fix.
I like Lamborghinis a lot and still do, but I sure as hell won’t be buying a Countach any time soon beyond the obvious reasons of “worth hundreds of thousands of dollars” and “useless for everything”. My thoughts on my next smartphone purchase echo this sentiment as I will explain in my next post…
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