To preface my s22 ultra is almost 2 years old (becomes two years next month) and I am out of warranty. Around the 17th when my phone updated I started having serious connection issues. These issues I chalked up to being in a new state until I realized my family was not having the same issues and have the same carrier as me. Fast forward to coming home I get stuck at 1AM in freezing temperatures with a dead car battery and my only cell service being Emergency calls only. Thankfully kind strangers could jumpstart me or I have no idea what I would do.
Before this, this issue had happened periodically but now it had become an actual danger for me and incredibly inconvenient so I had to address it. My phone regularly drops signal and I am stuck in outings not knowing if I can even download maps for google maps to even make it home nevermind not even being able to play spotify in my car or take calls from those who need me. Places with wifi are my holy grail now and give me great piece of mind but are few and far between.
I began contacting Verizon support and trying all their troubleshooting methods. We quickly pinpoint the sim card as a possible problem. With their help I move over to an e-sim and hope that is an end to all my problems. Nope. I'm back to the same issues. I sat in a coffee shop with a friend who has an iPhone and is also on verizon. I had emergency calls only and she had perfect signal and 0 issues. So I go into the physical Verizon store and they go through a few things like bills and such and say they have no idea what is wrong consider getting a new phone, it's not them causing this issue.
With all this, I begin my search online and stumble on a few sources that seem to be having similar problems to me. It's either an antenna or software issue, either way Samsungs fault, and with very few successful troubleshooting methods, if any besides sending in for repairs.
So begins my calling to Samsung support. First they go through the diagnostics then try to upsell me on the s23 ultra and say I can do a trade in. I refuse adamantly stating this phone is not even 2 years old how can I trust something similar would not happen to my new s23 ultra. They then made me go into a repair store to find out if its a hardware issue. My phone comes back with a clean bill of health and the store says it is likely software.
My final saga now begins. I call Samsung again my phones hardware clean bill of health in hand. They say I should go into the store and have my software reflashed, which I had expected them to ask. So, tomorrow I go in and pay $40 hoping this is fixed. However, I spoke to the most wonderful technician when I scheduled that. She told me that she has seen this issue a few times with the s22 ultra and the reflash works about 20% of the time and if it doesn't Samsung will ask you to get a new motherboard ($800 or so). She also just recommended a new phone at that point. I thanked her profusely for the info and will see how that goes tomorrow
Now for the future, I have an iPhone sitting in my cart mourning the fact I may have to get a phone far earlier than I had ever intended and leaving a brand I have been with for 7 years. My phone not even 2 years old reduced to an expensive device I can't even rely on unless it's an extremely serious emergency. Untrustworthy
The worst part is support doesn't even seem very aware about this issue and the posts I have seen on it have been sparse and spread apart. I want to draw more eyes to this as it is essentially bricking a phone that still works great in other areas and I am bummed to part ways with
Thank you for making it this far and I hope the rest of your day treats you well
TLDR: Samsung ruins my phone most likely through updates or a faulty antenna. I and others get to pay the price
