So Tuesday night my Siemens SX-1 that I use for everything (radio, mp3 player, phone obviously, games) decided to puke all over itself with errors and OS warnings. Leading up to this I had a low battery, I had cleaned off some old images from the camera section, and called my wife. Nothing out of the ordinary. When I went to use the phone a half hour later it had turned off. I figured it had just run out of battery.
When I inserted a fresh battery and tried to boot it, it asked for the date and time, not a good sign. When it booted fully, I got about three or four OS warnings about threads and processes dying or not starting. Then after another reboot or two, it just stopped getting beyond the initial screen about 5 seconds after boot. It turns on but stays on for a few seconds and then shuts off again.
I downloaded firmware version 15, which the phone already had that I had installed a few months ago, to reapply it. I flashed it twice and it didn't help.
Now here's the even more fun part of this saga. This is my 2nd SX-1. The first was the awesome, jet-black McLaren SX-1 version which lasted about two months before it became a paperweight brick after I tried to upgrade it. Also the speaker had stopped working before this happened so it was on its way out anyway. After wrangling with Siemens here in the US about the warranty (since I bought it on ebay, but the ebay seller sent me a copy of the receipt and I said it was a gift), Siemens sent me a new SX-1 ... a regular SX-1 and not my McLaren. I was pretty much told to just deal with it by them but they would be happy to give my dead McLaren SX-1 back or I could keep the one they sent me. I kept the one they sent me.
This was in the Dec/Jan timeframe so this one lasted considerably longer but still 8 months for a phone? Why can't Siemens get their sh** together on these?
After my failure at reflashing it on Wednesday morning, I called their customer disservice again and was told that the phone was out of warranty and they were not handling SX-1's that are out of warranty in the US any longer. I would have to send the phone to Germany. I swear I'm not making this up, this is what they expect customers to do. How can a company seek to maintain customer loyalty when they abandon customers and tell them to handle repairs essentially on their own (how am I going to get the damn thing to Germany and figure out how to pay them in Euros, bridge the language gap, whatever). I'm willing to pay to service the phone since it has been (barely) over a year since I bought the original McLaren SX-1 thus it is out of warranty. But they are unwilling to help me here in the US.
I faxed a nasty letter to Siemens customer care's fax # in San Diego yesterday hoping to provoke a response. I haven't heard a thing. I don't think I'm being unreasonable here since I am willing to pay to get the thing fixed. They are just not presenting me with any realistic way of getting the phone fixed!!
The other bad part of this is that if I have to get another phone, I do like the Wi-Fi phones and/or PDA combos. The Siemens SX-66 seems to be the best of the bunch. The guy at T-Mobile told me that Ipaq one was discontinued because it had so many problems, and the Treo 650's don't really do it for me. I have Cingular GSM service by the way. But why would I want to give them more of my money when they can't even support the product I have now? What about in a year when the SX-66 service moves to Thailand or Germany again, or wherever Siemens wants to send me to get rid of me?
Well, I just thought I'd share. The SX-1 was everything and more than I ever wanted in a little device. I loved the 1 gig MMC flash I put in and the tons of mp3's I could listen to, the radio, and the great games. Siemens really isn't giving me any option here though. Is it any wonder that their mobile business is hurting? A $500 phone with tons of features that breaks in 8 months sure isn't a very viable product to sell.
Adam in Chicago