My Samsung Galaxy Captivate keeps freezing and has messed up keyboard

Hi,

I have this Samsung Galaxy Captivate SGH-1896 phone which I got from Rogers (Canada) in first week of April, 2011 and it is still in its warranty. Ever since I got this phone I have had issues with it. The battery drains quickly but now I use only very few options so that is not much of concern but there are other pressing problems and one of which looks very weird to me if not unique.

The phone had its initial firmware version of 2.0 and my phone would keep on freezing whenever I used it for checking emails or browsing the net. It was very frustrating as once it froze, no button would work, not even the power off button would work. The only way the phone would come back to life is taking the cover off, open the back cover and take the battery out. Wait for a couple of minutes and then it would start working. The frequency of the phone freezing was some time once in a week to some times twice in a day. I called Rogers Customer Care and I was told as the phone is in warranty I need to go to a Rogers Plus Centre and they will have it repaired for me. So, I went to a Rogers Plus Centre and I was told that they will have to take the phone and send it to Samsung for repair which might take 3-4 weeks. However, during that period they would NOT BE ABLE to loan me any similar smart phone but only an ordinary phone on which I can not access email or data. I did not like what I heard and insisted that I needed a similar phone but NO LUCK.  Alternatively, I was told to contact Samsung as they do not provide similar phone for loaner purposes if we send them any phone for repair. I decided not to leave the phone as I needed the same.

I then decided to upgrade my firmware version to check if the problem would go. So, I upgrated the version to 2.3.3 (Gingerbread) by downloading from Samsung Canada's website. After I upgraded the version, the frequency of freezing (hanging) of the phone though did not go away completely but was certainly reduced, so I felt a bit relieved. However, I noticed one very WEIRD thing in my phone's key board while texting one day and that my keyboard is NOT a true QWERTY keyboard but has messed up some keys. The key 'Y' is not at the place where the key 'Z' should be and 'Z' is now in place of "y". Rest all keys are at their own respective places. This causes problems and spelling mistakes in texting and emailing. So, now I called SAMSUNG and told lthem about both the problems and SAMSUNG is not helping things by saying that OUR POLICY DOES NOT ALLOW TO GIVE YOU ANY LOANER PHONE or SIMILAR PHONE till such time your phone gets repaired and it is the duty of your carrier, ROGERS to send the phone to us and give you any loaner phone. So, again back to square one. Rogers, though would give loaner phone but not a similar smart phone as they say Samsung does not give them loaner phones and SAMSUNG says you bought the phone from ROGERS and they are your carrier and they should be taking care of you.

I am perplxed and do not know how to resolve it. I paid to Rogers for this phone and simply asking similar phone till such time they do repair it and SAMSUNG does not have any professionalism and keep bouncing the responsibility back to Rogers and not having a loaner phone policy. In fact for them I am not even their client as the phone was sold throgh Rogers.

Any pointers?


Thanks

Thanks for the quick and detailed reply,

The keyboard issue got solved automatically while I was fiddling with keyboard. However, your detailed explanation shows what the real issue was. My Language and Locate was English Canada but the globe button on the keyboard seems to superseed the keyboard configuation if you press it accidentally. I wonder why the Samsung Tech did not tell me about it. They only confirmed about the language and locale setting, which was correct but they did not tell about the changes done by the Globe Button on the SWYPE key board.

Secondly, I only wanted Rogers to give me any smart phone (not necessarily the same) becuase the ordinary phone would not have helped me in checking the emails or browsing the net.

Any ways, thanks once again for quick and detailed explanation which I am sure would help others as well in similar situations.

Cheers!!