The Sound of Silence, Part 2

I went through several levels of tech support at Sprint and eventually got someone to send me a replacement phone over this high-pitched noise issue. I received my replacement last night and immediately plugged in headphones to see if it had the same problem. Sadly, it did.



I went to my local Sprint store. They took it in the back and did some diagnostics on it. Their tech said there was something screwy with the wiring in the headphone jack (actually he said it was put in backwards) that might be causing the feedback. He said it wasn't something they were equipped to fix in-store.

I asked if could just get a different phone, since all the Photons I'd tried (including their store demo) had this problem. They said basically their hands were tied. I'm past my 30-day return policy so I have to follow through all the official channels to get a working phone. I called tech support again, from the store, and pleaded my case. What I wanted was for them to bypass the "must try two replacements before we give you something else" policy and just send me a different phone of equal value.

I got no love. The Sprint tech said he had to send me a second Photon just to satisfy their policy, so I'm stuck listening to a dog whistle every time sound comes out of my phone for another couple of days.

For what it's worth, everyone I talked to at Sprint both on the phone and in person were very pleasant and understanding. I could tell they genuinely wanted to help, but they had to follow their company's no-exceptions, "three tries before you're out" policy. The woman who helped me at my store, Donna, was ready to give me another phone on the spot, but she couldn't get approval for it until they'd exhausted the third replacement.

After the issues I had with the Motorola Triumph and this problem with the Photon, I'm done with Motorola for some time. Perhaps completely. In the past their products have been very good, but in their current crop of smart phones (the Bionic has been reported with this same whine issue) they dropped the ball on quality control. It will take me a while before I trust them again.

Should my second replacement have the same problem (and I'm betting money it will), stay tuned for a rant on whatever phone I get as a replacement. At the current time that looks like it will be a Samsung Galaxy S2, or Epic 4G Touch (the Sprint website lists both names).