If you own Samsung’s Galaxy S4, the one that uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600, then there’s a small chance you may have heard some distortion coming out of your headphones. According to Android Police, this is a well known problem. They point to a 16 page thread on XDA and a 120+ comment thread on Reddit with people reporting clipping issues. Someone even ran some a comprehensive analysis on the GS4’s audio output, which you can see here.
Look, if you don’t have any issues, then fine, congratulations, consider yourself lucky. If you do, you should try to get your unit returned. If you have a GS4 powered by Samsung’s Exynos chip, then you shouldn’t be seeing this problem at all since that device uses a completely different audio system.
Knowing Samsung, if enough people complain then they’ll issue a statement. My gut tells me this problem might be so rare that a simple replacement program will make everyone happy.
But you never know.
Update: Someone just sent me the following tweet.
https://twitter.com/gilroyneil/status/334212549128097792