G'day,

Back in April, my fiancee upgraded from an old flip-texting phone under Verizon to a Samsung Galaxy S3 from Sprint.

Soon after she received it, she experienced ongoing and worsening degradation of the quality of the phone's usage.

In the Messaging app, when trying to bring up the Keyboard (Swype or stock Samsung) it will take 15-30 seconds for the UI to move the "Received/sent" text area to display the area where the Keyboard should be, then a further 15-30 seconds to actually display the Keyboard.

Sending texts, using the Back button to exit Messaging, or Home, will cause the app to "hang" for a further 15-30 seconds (longer, if sending an MMS, which is a problem because we have kittens that absolutely demand having pictures taken).

Moving between Home screens or App/folder views is quick, but any usage of apps and needing to move back and forth between them experiences, with regularity, "locking" or simple "freezing" of the app before the phone "decides" to swap/open/close.

The "standard fixes" of rebooting or battery-pulling didn't work.

I finally convinced her to let me wipe the phone using the Factory Reset some time in August.
Settings > Personal > Back Up and Reset > Factory Data Reset > Reset Device > Delete All.

Ran it for a day (with no additional software installed) before the problems started reoccurring. She ended up reinstalling the apps on her own because she didn't want to deal with Sprint support (having been burned by Verizon's before.)

I ended up re-wiping it early December and again the same issues are occurring, this time within just hours of completion.

It is not rooted and is fully stock 4.1.2 w/ Touchwiz, uses the phone's Calendar, Gmail and Email (Yahoo address) and just a few third-party apps (IMDB, Poynt, Waze, Dropbox, and a couple others she barely uses). There is no SD card present.

Am I at the point that I must inform her that she absolutely must speak to Sprint Support and work with warranty repair/replacement? Or is there something else I can do?

Thanks!