The fact that Samsung has not admitted to this serial default means that the OLED panel issue cannot always be dealt with by making a warranty claim, for example when the smartphone has tiny damages – no matter whether these are on the display or not.

The warranty claim was denied due to minor cuts on the frame.

As you can read in various Internet forums, warranty claims on defective devices seem to depend on the customer service employee you are communicating with and are simply a matter of luck. Our office has also been affected by this display default. We purchased the Galaxy S7 (Edge) as part of a mobile phone plan with our operator. The device was bought shortly after its release in Germany and was one of the first production batches.

When talking to employees in one of the operator’s local branches, we were informed that Samsung denies warranty claims for devices with even the smallest of visible flaws. As our device has a small cut in the frame, which happened several months earlier, we were not given a replacement device by the operator. When we complained, saying that the pixel default could in no way be connected to the visible cut on the metal frame, the branch employee explained that accepting the warranty claim now, even with only the smallest physical fault, would entail later receiving a bill for the costs of repair from Samsung.

The price for repairing the issue is between 300 and 350€ (~$370-430), while a new device currently costs around 400€ (~$490)!

Nonetheless, we tried again to claim warranty - this time via Samsung’s own hotline. In our conversation with the call center, we were promised that the defect display would be repaired on warranty, no matter if there were damages to the frame of the case or not. We should therefore contact the service partner – in our case "Let-me-repair” in Berlin. After getting in touch with Let-me-repair, the Samsung service partner told us the same thing as our operator had. According to employees of Let-me-repair, Samsung told them to refuse any warranty claims for devices that have the "pink line of death" and mechanical damages – no matter how small these are. They could not understand why we were told otherwise on the Samsung hotline.

We then contacted Samsung Germany about the issue, but unfortunately only received this vague answer: