Did Your Code Ever Make Anyone Deaf?

theodp writes "Siemens AG anticipates additional costs from a software problem with new mobile phones that has led retailers to suspend sales. Five models of its new 65 series can emit a piercing melody into users' ears if the battery fails during a call, causing hearing damage in extreme cases, according to a statement."

Comments

Hearing damage = deaf

[Capt'n Hector]

Any time your ears ring, it's "hearing damage". I play violin, and whenever I practice, and for a few hours afterword, I get a noticable ringing in my ears. It actually doesn't go away fully, I can always hear this ringing (sometimes a lower frequency buzzing) at night. This is hearing damage, but I'm not deaf. However, if this were caused by a cellpone, you bet I'd be suing.

Re:Hearing damage = deaf

[AlphaPB]

The quiet buzzing when you're in a silent place is actually caused by the sound-sensitive cilia in your inner ear vibrating of their own accord when they don't have any external stimulation. This is a normal phenomenon.

Of course, this is different from the kind of hearing damage that you're referring to. Maybe you should wear earplugs while practising. I wear them at rock concerts. You ought to look into musician's plugs, which have specially tuned noise-dampening responses that are consistent in how they reduce noise levels at various frequencies.

Re:Hearing damage = deaf

[eliza_effect]

A drummer friend of mine has these. They were custom -molded to his ears, and I think they were around $300 AFAIK. High price aside, he said they've pretty much saved his hearing, as he can hear everything just about as clearly as normal, however, most of the harmful frequencies are blocked. You can literally have them in and hear someone wisper, and then go play the drums without hurting yourself.

Re:Hearing damage = deaf

[silentbozo]

There's a broad selection of musician's earplugs that preserve a select set of frequencies to aid in pitch transmission, while blocking the majority of the energy in the soundwaves.

I always keep a pair of regular hearos with me - you never know when you'll need em (for example, you end up having to spend more than a few hours servicing equipment in a noisy server room, you want to catch a nap and want to block out noise, you decide to take a trip out to the range and need hearing protection.)

Re:Hearing damage = deaf

[valkoinen]

I get ringing noise in my ears sometimes, less frequently now that I've started to actually protect my hearing actively.

I learned this thing somewhere and it works for me sometimes - When I start to get that ringing noise I can concentrate and make it go away. Usually I imagine the source of the ringing in my head and in my mind I "squeeze" the source until it goes away.

It can be hard at first, but I usually can control it pretty well, or at least make it less audible so it doesn't bother me that much and when I forget about it it usually goes away too.

I believe the brain just filters out the noise, but the trick is how to tell your brain to do that.

Funniest thing

[cablepokerface]

My gf bought one of these things a couple of days ago, when this statement was released the Dutch news networks thought it was important enough to put in the news on the radio. So I heard it driving home from work.

The first thing I did when I got home was telling the misses that that tune she always hears when the phone is actually ringing on the other side (when every phone user already has the thing to his ear) was not here to stay.

I am not sure if this is how it's done with every Siemens but with her it was menu option 3.8.3 (or Sound Options -> Other Tunes -> Connection Tune (on/off). Get rid of it.

Re:Where's the QA

[eln]

Well, if you keep your batteries charged at least halfway at all times, the phone is far more likely to burn your ear off before you get to this condition anyway. Most cell phones generate enough heat for you to want to end the call quickly far before this particular condition occurs.

Having said that, I've certainly had cell phones whose "low battery" beeps can be pretty damn ear-splitting when they happen when you're in the middle of a call, but I've never had one that could actually make you deaf.

Only after three tries

[RollingThunder]

The story on El Reg has a bit of helpful information (emphasis mine):

The flaw affects version 11 of the software of the C65, CX65, M65, S65 model phones, and then only if the phone has already issued three low-battery warnings.

With the "only after three" it sounds like this was meant a 'feature' where they assumed that if you didn't do something after the first three beeps, it must be in your pocket or somewhere else you can't hear it - so crank up the volume.

Obviously, they forgot that people won't immediately end their calls - rather, they'll stay on the call, because their phone is about to die, and they want to get as much info across before it kicks the bucket.

Software errors also cost lives

[msblack]

My old Samsung SCH-3500 had a similar problem but the folks at SprintPCS could never locate the problem nor would they offer a replacement.

One of the most serious software problems involved the Therac 25 computerized radiation therapy device. Several patients received exterme overdoses of X-rays due to a programming bug. It's a well-known case covered in some computer ethics classes. Unfortunately, most software is exempt from product liability claims.

Re:Maximum volume

[Animats]

Wireline ring voltage is 88V 20Hz, so all you get is a loud bass buzz.

Re:My point, exactly.

[gl4ss]

the 'feature' has been in siemens phones in one way or another for quite a few years already.

this time they just overdid it.

definetely wasn't about 'saving a buck', just about plain stupidity.

I've got a new M65...

[Zarathustra.fi]

And it's software is a piece of crap, full of bugs! I know there're software updates out there, but conveniently Siemens didn't supply the phone with a data cable. But hey, I could buy it for 30 euros! Brilliant, I can buy myself a right to patch the phone!! Or, as it turned out, I could find the single provider in my home town who's able to patch the phone. Though, I'm not sure if it's cost free even there..

Enough of personal whine, here're some of the most annoying bugs and misfeatures:

- The sounds are really loud, even in their lowest setting.
- Software crashes if I try to read SMS messages through a shortcut interface. Instead, I must go carefully through few extra menus not to crash the system.
- GUI jams if I cancel a call just after I dialed it in
- The battery dies in just a few days' casual use
- Sometimes during battery charging the screen backlight hangs on, so when you pick up your phone, the backlight has used all the power in the battery and it's all out again.

So, these are the "few" little bugs I'm experiencing. My previous phone was not totally bug free itself, but those few little hickups were nothing considered to these MAJOR bugs Siemens let in the wild with a crappy software on a good looking phone!

The laws of acoustics and hearing damage

[incog8723]

I submitted a comment accidentally without the proper references, but basically, OSHA says that

Sound level:
Maximum allowable duration per day
100 dB: 2 hours
102 dB: 1½ hour
105 dB: 1 hour
110 dB: ½ hour
115 dB: ¼ hour or less

Reference: http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_docum ent?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=9735

So, unless your cellphone is expressing 115db ringtones, for over 15 minutes, and you're STILL listening to it, you have nothing to worry about. DUH!!!!!! This is a case of hot coffee from McDonalds. If you're having a painful noise injected into your ear, you remove yourself from the source. Hot coffee is even MORE of a reason to sue than this. WAKE UP PEOPLE.

Re:The laws of acoustics and hearing damage

[Jerf]

Worse; the sound is dissapating into the environment at your belt buckle, but will be directed into your ear if you have it at your ear when it goes off. You can probably tack on another 3-10 dB for that, depending on the phone's construction. (Wide range there because I don't know the numbers, just the effect; for that matter it may come out over 10, I'm just not confident about it.)

The inverse square law is for a perfectly spherical emitter in an obstacle-free environment (a sea of air), in reality it can be a bad over- or under-estimate, depending on whether the sound is being directed toward or away from you. This is one of those cases where it an under-estimate, possibly a very bad one, because the sound is fairly directional by design, and when held to your ear, it is directed right into it.

As the sound gets more and more directional, the drop-off approaches 0; you can never reach that, but if you've heard about those ultra-sound based speakers that use non-linearity in the air to create audible sound, one of several reasons they are cool is their ability to be highly directional (higher frequencies can be more directional), so you can beam sound across a football field if you want, since the sound's directionality borrows the characteristics of the ultra-sonic frequencies. Cute trick.

Ericsson And Sony-Ericss phones have similar flaws

[djace]

I've owned an Ericsson phone, and it had a similar flaw. After hitting the Automatically Redial option when a number is busy, when the phone is able to go thru, it plays a LOUD tone. And, this is done even when the phone is on "Silent" mode. Newer Sony-Ericsson models only do this when the "Silent" mode is off. Even though, nowhere in the manual does it say that you should NOT hold the phone next to your ear when using the Automatically Redial option.

Example of bad sound code...

[feidaykin]

I was using a friend's computer... this friend just happened to have the fancy Klipsch THX certified speakers, which cost a pretty penny... Anyway, we got to talking about old DOS games and this one called "Acid Tetris" came to mind, and for nostalgia purposes, we decided to download it. My friend was a little concerned something "bad" would happen running such an old DOS game in XP, but I was confident since I've run games like Dune II without any major issues, and besides, the worst that can happen is it just won't work... right?

So, so very wrong. The instant it opened an eardrum-shattering scream let loose through the mighty, three figure dollar amount speakers. I instantly closed out the game only to find that a persistent buzzing sound was present. At this point I think my friend stopped breathing (fearing the speakers were totally ruined) and I thought, hey no big deal, I'll just reboot. Buzz sound was still there. Well no big deal, let's just power down and unplug everything. Buzz sound still there. I didn't think it was that bad, but this nameless friend of mine couldn't stand it and bought new speakers.

And I now have a pair of Klipsch speakers that make a rather obnoxious buzzing noise. But they were free! So, in a sense, this bad sound code that almost ruined these speakers (they're worthless in dollar terms, no way I could sell them on eBay, etc) also provided me with free speakers that I never would have bought with my own funds.

I must therefore both curse and thank the developers of Acid Tetris, and more likely the folks in charge of backwards compatibility at Microsoft, and my own stupid self for running an old program and trusting XP to not bork itself.

If you've read this whole thing you're a brave, yet sad soul... but stay tuned for further adventures in computing with your hero(or nemesis?), the one and only Michael "Mad" Raymer!

Re:Example of bad sound code...

[Zone-MR]

It sounds like your friend hadn't set the volume levels correctly.

Most likely, the speakers were set to a very high volume, and this was compensated for by setting the volume level on Windows XP very low. The old DOS game ignored the WinXP volume level, and produced the maximum output the sound card was capable of.

If the speakers were set to produce a loud but non-destructive level of sound at the soundcards maximum output, this would never have happened. However badly the game was designed, it could not have made the soundcard produce an output higher than 5V pk-pk

Re:No...

[matth]

Interestingly my Samsong A310 doesn't quiet do this... but I have on several occassions gone to make a call only to be greeted with the phone going "BEEP" very loudly in my ear and when I look at the display it has returned to the regular "stand-by" screen. I'll tell you, that BEEP is extremely high pitched and loud an dI have yet to figure out why it does it.