S25 Ultra bought on day 1 suddenly defunct in 20 months.
I pre-booked and bought an S25 Ultra on day one, Feb of 2025, and now 3rd of October 2026, my phone is suddenly defunct. I get a call from a regular contact, and as I'm about to pick it up, the phone makes a loud and persistent sound for about 5-10 seconds before shutting down completely. It automatically reboots soon after and starts working fine. About 10 mins later, in the middle of a normal usage, the phone reboots again, and this happens 6-7 times that evening.
Later, the phone gets stuck on the boot screen (the one with the Samsung logo) and stays there getting pretty hot until it completely drains all the battery. Once it has fully drained, I charge the phone and boot it, and voila, it works! That night, the phone works normally and I ensure all the backup is taken just in case (I anyhoo have a back-up of my WhatsApp and Photos to my NAS on a daily basis so there wasn't much extra left to do).
Next morning, my phone is still alive, and just as I am about to text someone, it turns off again, making the same sound it made earlier. This time though, it never really fully boots up. I try all sorts of things - Power and Volume down for normal hard reboot, Power and Volume up while connected to a laptop for a recovery mode, I even managed to get into recovery once and do a factory reset from there, and the phone did momentarily boot up fine on the welcome screen - but in the middle of my onboarding it dies again.
I showed it to my local Service Centre, and they said the motherboard is faulty (it's their favorite thing to say, isn't it?). The cost of replacement is INR 57 thousand (about $592 USD). They confirmed that there is no water damage, no dent/scratch or any sign of physical damage. It's absolutely pure bad luck.
He even said there have been no cases of the S25 Ultra dying like this randomly, it truly is one of a kind rare occurrence.
I feel devastated. I bought into the Samsung ecosystem after having used the S21FE for about 3 years, and it grew on me. In fact, I'm using my old S21 FE as a temp phone rn. I use their default services almost religiously - the wallet, DEX amongst others, and it's genuinely a shame that a flagship product like this dies withing such a short time and the company takes no responsibility. I understand that a warranty exists for a reason, but a flagship phone dying in these circumstances is equally rare and unlikely, and if anyone needs to take responsibility for it, it sure as hell shouldn't be the consumer.
A phone that is designed for 7 years of software updates surely has been given enough thought in the hardware department that it should last AT LEAST to see all the updates.
I have tried raising this issue with Samsung customer care and have had them escalate it to the higher ups, and I genuinely hope I get a reasonable resolution.
Has anyone had an experience along these lines? Feels tough to see a 1200 USD paperweight on my desk.