For any company that's releasing a product that will be used by customers out in the wild, the goal is to release something that works. Something that, in its own specific way, makes life a bit easier. For smartphones, which play host to a variety of different use case scenarios, there's a lot of technology packed inside a thin shell. Companies have to hope that, despite all of their testing --and there is a lot of testing-- the device(s) still work when they are out there beyond headquarters and labs.
Sometimes it doesn't work out that way, though.
The issues can range in severity, too. They can be minor, like having a smartphone's touchscreen that gets less responsive in colder weather (though, launching your phone when winter encroaches is admittedly bad timing for a problem like that). Or you might hear a faint buzzing sound while you're holding the phone up to your ear and on a call.
In the grand scheme of things, while very annoying, these cases are definitely "it could be worse" scenarios. And of course we've seen what looks like. A defect in a battery can cause smartphones to explode when they're being used out in the wild. These situations are very troubling for the company, but they are definitely just as annoying for the person that forked over money for a product that might be too janky to use.
I've had devices in the past that don't have lock screens. I've had phones that won't pop up a keyboard, even when I'm trying to reply to a text message. I've run into the brutally common occurrence of a software update mangling battery life. Over the years I've wrestled with plenty of software and hardware issues.
With Apple's iPhone X and Google's Pixel 2/Pixel 2 XL running into their own series of issues ever since they arrived on the market, I've been wondering how serious these types of issues have to be for you to consider going to a different device. Just how long are you willing to deal with software and/or hardware issues before you decide to return/exchange the affected device? Let me know!