That's quite alright Yzer. We each have our own opinions and different expectations, which is one reason I enjoy this thread. I have no idea how you put up with that misfiring button though. IMO a button that misfires a couple of times a day is enough to warrant a button replacement, and that is exactly what mine have done when I decided to replace them. I just don't have the patience to deal with a misfiring button and to me it has already "failed" if it doesn't fire consistently 100% of the time. I need to feel confident that when I press the button it's going to fire.
Back to the original topic, I have to call it like I see it from personal experience with this device. I happened to purchase both of my V3's at the same time you bought each of yours (original and later versions), and I've had the opportunity to get 1st hand experience with an additional 6 devices owned by close friends and family (most are the latest versions). I'm not considering the additional V3's I've repaired for people that have PM'd me, because that wouldn't be fair (they're obviously bad or they wouldn't send them to me to fix). I've likely held and worked on more V3's than most people, and I don't mention it to boast but rather to underline that my opinion is based on a larger group of V3's than most people have had the opportunity to come into contact with, and that should count for something.
I realize that the posts in this thread could be considered a group of V3's or V5's that we can pull data from, but I doubt that everyone would post a comment who is experiencing problems. I would recommend caution when basing the failure rates of a device purely on thread posts because I just don't feel it will be accurate. People don't always have the time nor the inclination to share their personal experiences (if they've even bothered to search the web for a solution). Another possibility that should be considered is that individuals with issues could have found this thread, confirmed their problem (since there are enough posts on screen shift and button issues), and simply tossed the device aside (it's only worth $45 bucks, right?). People may simply decide not to post about something that's already been posted to death about, especially since several of us have contributed solutions to these problems already. Ex. "Yup, my V3 is broken, it's a common issue according to what I'm reading in this thread, so why bother registering as a member of ECF just so I can post and tell a bunch of V3 owners what they're already aware of". I'm just saying... just because we haven't seen many complaints in this thread lately is not a reliable way to judge that failure rates are lower than they were before. If we really want to reliably collect that sort of data then some sort of poll is probably a better way to do it.
I completely agree with what you're saying in regard to expectations vs. price, and I hear you loud and clear that these are not $150 devices and no one should expect the same kind of reliability from a $45 device. I've always agreed on this point and as I've said before I still love them and use them exclusively. That being said, I've had to eventually fix and modify both of them to fix these flaws so I could get the reliability that I desire (shifted screen and button failure on each of these). More accurately, I've eventually needed to do this for all my friends and family that own them as well.
My main point in all of this is that anyone who is thinking about buying one should have as much honest info as possible to base that decision on. I think this thread continues to be a great place for people to get that info and discuss these devices. Nobody said that we always had to agree on the facts.
(Edited to add quote and made corrections for better clarity)
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