Originally posted by normhead I'm not sure why people are so quick to think this is solely a Pentax issue.
Unfortunately , ILC cameras are electro mechanical design , the failure rate is higher than electronic PCB or pure mechanical , simply because electronics and mechanical stress don't go well together.
I've seen two Canon failing in front of my eye when the user was about to take a picture. One was the Canon lens AF motor burned, and the other one was the side flip screen stopped working.
The difference between Canon and Pentax, is you bring your failing Canon camera lens to where you bought it and Canon give a new one, trash the old one behind the counter, because Canon make cameras by the million like Barilla make pasta, Pentax just can't do that. You don't hear much about Canon failure because there is a strong service behind the many cameras and lenses that fail. You get the same with Nikon, it just that you won't read this in DPReview, but you'll eventually see those camera fail in the field. Online comments are really miss-leading, I wanted to buy a GFX50R, due to all the nice reviews etc, until I saw how the firmware hangs all the time and AF misses focus 100 times more than my K1. The actual state of camera is totally buried under tons of content marketing, so it's very hard to figure things out unless you rent the camera and try for yourself, when I try, I can see often that things are not like they are advertised online.