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.)

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.

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.

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.

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