I got my Galaxy Nexus in Jan of this year. I've always been an early adopter and have paid way too much for the pleasure of getting phones early and sometime even without being eligible for an upgrade. This time, I showed great restraint by waiting a couple months after it was released. My experience with Verizon and this phone has been horrendous.
I've had the problems with the calls seeming to mute in mid call. The only way to remedy that was to reboot the phone. So, I'd taken to warning the other party at the start of a call that this might happen and that I'd have to call them back after a reboot. I took to calling it a great phone...if you didn't need to use it as a phone. I waited for the software upgrade from a few weeks ago thinking that that would fix the problem. No dice.
I finally got so sick of this happening that I called Verizon for help a couple of weeks ago. They got me to tech support, who immediately noted that this was a "known problem" and that they'd send out a new phone that should fix things. Great! That phone had a problem with the screen not sensing touch on the sides. Didn't have it long enough to see if it worked...as a phone.
I'm now on the next replacement. Same problem. It's the Pinocchio of phones--it wants to be a real phone.
I called Verizon again. They offered to send another, but they admitted that it would probably have the same problem. They recommended that I call Samsung. Samsung offered to have me send in the phone and they would "fix" the problem and send it back. Problem is that I've been getting "fixed" phones from the manufacturer as replacements. They aren't fixed.
So here I am, a four or five year customer with five lines, that has a phone that isn't a phone.
Bottom line, tell your friend that if they want a really expensive texting device, then they should go for it. If they want a phone that works, they should look somewhere else.
