Replaced after 10 days
I purchased the Brigadier on Tuesday 12/18/2014 as a birthday present for my soon to be 13 year old son. This is his second phone and was ready for his two year upgrade.
His last phone, the S3, was a disaster in waiting. It had to go back to Samsung after a month for issues and again back to them a second time soon thereafter for another issue where they landed up replacing the motherboard.
As with many young kids, my son slowly destroyed the USB port because of improper handling. And since it was just this past summer when it completely failed, I decided to try wireless charging for the S3 versus a $90.00 repair bill with only a few months to go for an upgrade. That lasted a month or so before he cracked the screen. I could never get details on how that exactly happened, other than his much younger rough and tumble half-brother had a play in my son breaking the screen.
Personally I have had the Casio Commando 4g for one year now after having the original Commando for the two year contract. My son desperately wanted an I-Phone. I despise Apple for various reasons which I shall not get into, and told my son outright that I will get it for him but will not get an ITunes account and he would be stuck on his own. In the mean time I was watching to see if a 3rd generation Commando would be released and found out the Casio is now out of the phone business.
During my search for my son’s next phone I came across the Brigadier and thought it would be a durable phone for my son – much more so then an I-Phone or a newer Galaxy.
Some thoughts and comments:
1) The only thing that has me second guessing the Brigadier is the non-replaceable battery. I know there are other android phones out there like that, but it reminds me of one the reasons I despise Apple.
2) I can’t get it out of my sons hands to play with it much but the few times that has happened, it is much more responsive than his old S3 or my current Command 4G.
3) Is Verizon listing to its’ customers? I was able to disable some of the bloatware on his phone like ‘NFL Mobile’. I can’t do that or uninstall it on my un-rooted Commando.
4) My son’s biggest complaint was that the S3 was too big for his pocket especially with an Otterbox attached to it. This is probably what swayed him to choose the Brigadier as it is not too small but especially not too big and should have more durability than most other phones available from Verizon.
Ok, enough said. Now for the reason the Brigadier had to be replaced …
Back on Christmas Eve, (8 days after buying it) my son calls me at work and says his phone is going bonkers and there is ‘settings’ all over the place. Not knowing what he was talking about, I had to wait to see it for myself to see what he was talking about.
Although he wasn’t specific when calling, he wasn’t kidding about ‘settings’ all over the place. Every tile/page was filled with the icon for ‘settings’. Even the bottom 4 icons which don’t change with each tile/page was filled with the ‘settings’ icon. I thought that somehow he did this by accident while the phone was in his pocket - sort of like pocket dialing
Since it was so soon after activating the phone, I thought the easiest way to correct the situation was to do a factory re-set, which I did. Everything came back as when it was first turned on.
Forward the clock to two days later which was yesterday (Friday), my son again calls me again and said ‘it happened again’. I should note that even though all the tiles/pages are filled with the ‘settings’ icon, the phone does still work including the installed apps.
All I can get out of my son on when this exactly happened was that he took it off the wireless charging pad, and the battery was 100%. As soon as he took it off the pad, he said it immediately dropped to something like 62%, and rebooted by itself. When it rebooted, all the tiles/pages where filled with the ‘settings’ icon.
He also mentioned that he had not downloaded any apps since the factory re-set so that also ruled out a misbehaving app unless it was/is one that came with the phone.
Being exactly 10 days old, later last evening, we took it back to our local Verizon store to if it could be replaced. The gentlemen I sat down with said ‘this sometimes happens’ and proceeded to remove each ‘settings’ icon from the home screen until that no longer worked – phone would not let him remove any more of them. He proceeds to re-start the phone and again tries to remove more of the icons and that does not work.
After a very brief conversation with the manager (who sold us the original phone), they decided to simply replace since we just got it Tuesday. It was actually the Tuesday before, but I was not going to argue that point.
So after some brief issues on their part with how to internally document the issue on their computer my son walked out of the store with his second Brigadier.
I know the world is not perfect and that there are ‘lemons’ out there, but I still hope that this second Brigadier will last for my son’s new two year contract. Especially since he does not want a case for it and because I don’t believe the insurance is worth it when the insurance really turns about the cost of 3/4ths of a new phone (assuming you pay for the insurance for two years and have to pay the $100 deductible for a replacement). Anyway my son knows the risks, and that the insurance we have is re-activating one of the old phones I have laying around if something happens to the Brigadier.
I purchased the Brigadier on Tuesday 12/18/2014 as a birthday present for my soon to be 13 year old son. This is his second phone and was ready for his two year upgrade.
His last phone, the S3, was a disaster in waiting. It had to go back to Samsung after a month for issues and again back to them a second time soon thereafter for another issue where they landed up replacing the motherboard.
As with many young kids, my son slowly destroyed the USB port because of improper handling. And since it was just this past summer when it completely failed, I decided to try wireless charging for the S3 versus a $90.00 repair bill with only a few months to go for an upgrade. That lasted a month or so before he cracked the screen. I could never get details on how that exactly happened, other than his much younger rough and tumble half-brother had a play in my son breaking the screen.
Personally I have had the Casio Commando 4g for one year now after having the original Commando for the two year contract. My son desperately wanted an I-Phone. I despise Apple for various reasons which I shall not get into, and told my son outright that I will get it for him but will not get an ITunes account and he would be stuck on his own. In the mean time I was watching to see if a 3rd generation Commando would be released and found out the Casio is now out of the phone business.
During my search for my son’s next phone I came across the Brigadier and thought it would be a durable phone for my son – much more so then an I-Phone or a newer Galaxy.
Some thoughts and comments:
1) The only thing that has me second guessing the Brigadier is the non-replaceable battery. I know there are other android phones out there like that, but it reminds me of one the reasons I despise Apple.
2) I can’t get it out of my sons hands to play with it much but the few times that has happened, it is much more responsive than his old S3 or my current Command 4G.
3) Is Verizon listing to its’ customers? I was able to disable some of the bloatware on his phone like ‘NFL Mobile’. I can’t do that or uninstall it on my un-rooted Commando.
4) My son’s biggest complaint was that the S3 was too big for his pocket especially with an Otterbox attached to it. This is probably what swayed him to choose the Brigadier as it is not too small but especially not too big and should have more durability than most other phones available from Verizon.
Ok, enough said. Now for the reason the Brigadier had to be replaced …
Back on Christmas Eve, (8 days after buying it) my son calls me at work and says his phone is going bonkers and there is ‘settings’ all over the place. Not knowing what he was talking about, I had to wait to see it for myself to see what he was talking about.
Although he wasn’t specific when calling, he wasn’t kidding about ‘settings’ all over the place. Every tile/page was filled with the icon for ‘settings’. Even the bottom 4 icons which don’t change with each tile/page was filled with the ‘settings’ icon. I thought that somehow he did this by accident while the phone was in his pocket - sort of like pocket dialing
Since it was so soon after activating the phone, I thought the easiest way to correct the situation was to do a factory re-set, which I did. Everything came back as when it was first turned on.
Forward the clock to two days later which was yesterday (Friday), my son again calls me again and said ‘it happened again’. I should note that even though all the tiles/pages are filled with the ‘settings’ icon, the phone does still work including the installed apps.
All I can get out of my son on when this exactly happened was that he took it off the wireless charging pad, and the battery was 100%. As soon as he took it off the pad, he said it immediately dropped to something like 62%, and rebooted by itself. When it rebooted, all the tiles/pages where filled with the ‘settings’ icon.
He also mentioned that he had not downloaded any apps since the factory re-set so that also ruled out a misbehaving app unless it was/is one that came with the phone.
Being exactly 10 days old, later last evening, we took it back to our local Verizon store to if it could be replaced. The gentlemen I sat down with said ‘this sometimes happens’ and proceeded to remove each ‘settings’ icon from the home screen until that no longer worked – phone would not let him remove any more of them. He proceeds to re-start the phone and again tries to remove more of the icons and that does not work.
After a very brief conversation with the manager (who sold us the original phone), they decided to simply replace since we just got it Tuesday. It was actually the Tuesday before, but I was not going to argue that point.
So after some brief issues on their part with how to internally document the issue on their computer my son walked out of the store with his second Brigadier.
I know the world is not perfect and that there are ‘lemons’ out there, but I still hope that this second Brigadier will last for my son’s new two year contract. Especially since he does not want a case for it and because I don’t believe the insurance is worth it when the insurance really turns about the cost of 3/4ths of a new phone (assuming you pay for the insurance for two years and have to pay the $100 deductible for a replacement). Anyway my son knows the risks, and that the insurance we have is re-activating one of the old phones I have laying around if something happens to the Brigadier.
