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Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Explodes In New York, Burns Six-Year-Old Boy (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A six-year-old boy from Brooklyn has reportedly become the latest victim of Samsung's disastrous exploding Galaxy Note 7 batteries. The boy had been using the device at his family home when it "suddenly burst into flames," according to the New York Post. He was rushed to hospital with burns to his body. Samsung issued a recall of 2.5 million of its latest flagship phone on September 2 -- which had only been released the previous month -- after 35 reports that lithium batteries were exploding while they were being charged. The injured boy's grandmother said that the fire caused by the phone was strong enough to "set off alarms in my house." "He is home now," Linda Lewis told press. "He doesn't want to see or go near any phones. He's been crying to his mother." Samsung issued a statement on Saturday, urging owners of the Galaxy Note 7 to "power down your device and return to using your previous phone. We will voluntarily replace your Galaxy Note 7 device with a new one, beginning on September 19th... We acknowledge the inconvenience this may cause in the market but this is to ensure that Samsung continues to deliver the highest quality products to our customers." The recall has caused Samsung's stock to plunge. On Monday, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. stock suffered from its biggest one-day price decline in its 28-year history as a public company.
Adult supervision is now required for all smartphones.
Surely they're aware of the recall. They gave a child in their care a device that is known it catch on fire under normal use.
... where are the photoshop artists when you need them to create suicide-bomber pictures with belts made of Note 7s?
I've used various thermal fuses to stop overheating in designs since the 1970s. Tell me why it should not be done in cellphone battery areas.
I had been following the thing a little bit but I thought the fire danger was just while charging, not under normal use...
If I didn't know, I don't know how some random non-technical family is supposed to know anything about it whatsoever.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
He doesn't want to see or go near any phones. He's been crying to his mother.
Don't worry, kid- for Christmas you're getting an iPhone 7 and an expensive set of wired headphones!
It's too bad that lousy software and bloatware/crapware don't cause companies' stock prices to plunge. Then maybe they'd do something about those things.
The cell phone companies are getting greedy using non-removable batteries that only benefit them. Maybe other companies will think twice and start using removable ones again.
It can also be used to boil water in an emergency. This will be a boon to backpackers.
Some big company is issuing a recall because their gadget can explode. This company is dead serious about it, urging user to keep using their older phone until they receive replacement for the newer-explodey phone.
In short: GADGET CAN EXPLODE, COMPANY WANTS YOU TO REPLACE IT.
You:
A. REPLACE: Hide the thing away in some solid trusted container and bring the shit as fast as you can to the nearest shop for replacement before it explodes.
B. IGNORE: You give it to your kid to muck around - specially because said kid is pre-schooler and has no concepts of "exploding" or "safety".
Any sane person will go for option A.
The only reason that option B doesn't qualify is that you remove the genes from the gene pool by proxy (for DA you need to remove your own genes from the pool before you reproduce. Not remove your offspring after you've reproduced. Aka: don't involve innocent people in the procedure).
Someone should *REALLY* call child protection service over this one. If the (grand-)parents are *THAT* stupid, chances are high that the kid is exposed to other risks due to the irresponsibility and stupidity of close family.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
"He doesn't want to see or go near any phones. He's been crying to his mother."
If that doesn't sound like "we are going to sue the shit out of Samsung for not bothering to pay attention to product recalls" idk what would.
I'm hoping for a fake video of Jony Ive explaining that smartphone battery fires are caused by interference from the 3.5mm jack.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Tell me why it should not be done in cellphone battery areas.
In theory, cellphone batteries, because they are made of lithium(*) have EVEN MORE protection than that.
Tons of protection directly built into the battery case itself, and in the charging circuit.
In practice: someone somewhere along the supply and/or assembly manage to fuck up enough of these protection.
Thus Samsung joins the hall of shame previously occupied by
- Sony (and their incendiary laptop batteries back in the early 2000s) who managed to burn countless laptops, even of 3rd party brand to which Sony was only a battery parts provider (and this fucker contain way much more energy than a smartphone battery. A laptop has the same energy content as a small handgrenade)
- and the various no-name Chinese clone maker of self-balance board (the things nick named "Hoverboards") who where focusing so much on making a quick buck that they completely neglected any protection in their rush. (and these fucker pack even more energy than a laptop. THAT's some dangerous fire/explosion hasard).
--- ...
(*) lithium tends to explode if
- you overcharge it
- you undercharge it then try to charge
- overheat
- draw too much current while using
- put too much current while charging
- puncture
Well metaphorically, it will explode if you look it the wrong way.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
To me, "exploding" and "going up in flames" is not the same thing. If I hold a phone in my hands and it goes up in flames, I drop it and might have some burns if I'm unlucky. If I hold a phone in my hands and it explodes, good bye hands.
Is there any reliable information what actually happens?
The question, that remains unanswered at the moment, is just how damaged is the Samsung Phone brand?
Is it on life support now after what just happened to a 6 year old NY-er?
As a parent I'm not keen on allowing any of my gang (7, 5, 3, & 6 mnths) to touch our smart phones, less so now.
This is where brand value and customer confidence in brand comes to the fore, when it threatens the safety of those who you protect.
Xmas time is going to be a tough one for Samsung and, for not paying attention to the quality and safety of supplied parts, they deserve it.
Which android brand will take their place?
I'd say take a hard look at the fucking chem heads instead.
No amount of electrical engineering can fix you strapping a bomb to an electric heater.
I wonder how EEs many lost their jobs in this?
As an EE I would also try to point my finger at some firmware guys, at some semiconductor guys and some chemical engineers. There's a lot involved in these sorts of batteries in consumer devices, plenty of blame to share.
play games. there are lots of mobile games for young children. some of them of actual educational value, most of them of value of keeping a bored child busy while parents get daily chores done.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I for one hope this is the even that causes Samsung to discontinue their idiotic policy of sealing in phone batteries.
They could have mailed out replacements with a return envelope so much more easily than depriving people of their devices for a week.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Would it be legal for Samsung to issue an OTA update to essentially brick the device (ideally affecting the charging controller, too)?
Would this be legal? Not that I'm advocating that sort of behavior, just wondering...as-is, it seems we barely own anything and are just borrowing it from the company...
Samsung is a pretty despicable company, when it comes to support and customer attention. Also, they load their phones with bloatware and plain junk.
Anyone else notice when a giant US company is struggling, it's competition suddenly does something insanely stupid?
No. It may have happened on occasion but by no means all the time. Coincidences, that's all.
There's a lot involved in these sorts of batteries in consumer devices, plenty of blame to share.
And eventually some janitor and the new guy in the mailroom will be fired, and the CEO will get a nice bonus.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
As an EE I would also try to point my finger at some firmware guys, at some semiconductor guys and some chemical engineers. There's a lot involved in these sorts of batteries in consumer devices, plenty of blame to share.
Samsung/Samsung SDI have already admitted it's a manufacturing defect.
I saw someone on twitter ask Benson Leung to test but he doesn't have a Note 7 USB-C cable.
USB-C being a real mess of a standard, it'd be great if people followed it to the letter but so far the past 2 or 3 years has been a shambles of risk and potentially fried devices.
Rather than carrying a stick pf dynamite in my pocket, next to important organs that I would prefer to keep, I would rather have a little thicker phone that allows for bigger, less energy dense battery. And then optimize software to reduce power demands. An old fashioned alphanumeric pager used to last weeks on a pair of non-explosive AA batteries. When the phone is not in active use, it does not need any more functionality to display notifications and receive phone calls on a secondary e-ink screen. When I actually unlock it, feel free to spin up the CPU and 1080p screen and then download stuff over LTE.
I wonder if Samsung is wishing they had listened to users and kept batteries user-removable.
ZERO. It is not a design fault. It is poor workmanship. Samsung themselves make the battery cells. A 3rd party company assembles the cells into battery packs. The battery pack assembly is what is at fault here. From everything I have read.
Here you go
But the problem is with the battery terminals causing an over current condition and over heating. Totally an electrical problem.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Please send in your Samsung Galaxy Note 7 immediately. Preferably via Air Mail. Signed ISIS
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Samsung did the right thing by admitting it right away. The lack of a "you're charging it wrong" type reaction saved it from becoming another -gate scandal.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Looks like the company was a bit too eager to hit its planned obsolescence targets.
ignatius
Not a Note 7. It was a Galaxy Core: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news... Possibly aftermarket battery?
I can easily imagine a lot of affected Note 7 owners -- approximately 2.5 million of them -- weren't exposed to the recall message for some reason.
We're speaking about smartphones.
- As per the various laws that were put into action in the name of "protection against terrorism" after 9-11, lots of countries (including the US) require tracking off all users of cell phone services (even pay as you go) to be properly registered. That means, at some point during purchase, this smartphone was associated with a SIM card that has an identity linked to it.
It's not necessarily the SIM card that finally ended up in the phone (e.g.: the grand parents might have bought it, but kept their old phone with the SIM in it, and might have given the smartphone as a present to the 6yo kid), but easy to track down that the grandparents were present at the moment when the phone was bought.
Through this way it is possible that the store chain that sold the phone (or the company that is keeping track of the cell phone customer for them) could track every last buyer of the phone and tell them. (They won't be able to tell the kid, but at least they can reach the grand parents who bought it).
If the way SIM-card holder registry is done in the US can't be used to track down users in case of emergency, then it's really a piece of shit that can't even stand up for the reason it was invoked (though I strongly suspect that this is the case. Just another privacy invading policy that can't be actually used against terrorism or for emergencies).
- Due to the way radio-wave licensing works, there are part of the phone radio circuits (parts of the firmware running in the modem, and the firmware running in the SIM card) that aren't update by Google / Samsung (they aren't part of the Android installation installed on the smartphone). ...cough...)
They are not supposed to be end-users accessible.
Only holder of license for the radio channel can access it. It's the carrier's job to send over-the-air updates to this part of the modem firmware, and to the SIM card. (When not straigh sending a new physical SIM card, because after 10 years the previous one is too old and useless to run anything compatible... been there...) (Also hope that your phone's SoC doesn't use it's modem chip *as a Northbridge/main controller* and the modem-firmware update causes freezes/crashes in the OS... cough... Qualcom!
Thus at any time every cell tower knows exactly which phone (and exactly which *hardware model* of phone) is connected to it (and might send such OTA updates).
Cell tower can also send not only SMS messages, but direct service message (a full screen text/warning that bypasses the SMS system).
Also keep in mind that, even without a SIM card, a smartphone *will* establish contact to a cell tower (at least to provide emergency calling services).
Thus it's trivially possible (with a bit of cooperation between carriers) that a message is delivered straigh to the screen of all concerned smartphones (i.e.: a specific IMEI range, or a certain firmware revision...)
Even if the 6yo can't read the "WARNING: this phone is about to explode" message, he'll probably complain to the nearest adult that the pop-up is disturbing his session of Pokémon.
As a comparison, 1 year ago, here around a couple of store chains needed to recall quick-build above-ground inflatable spas/whirlpool due to potential electric shock hasard in the heating system.
It's not even an IoT connected thing, there's no automatic way to remotely contact users / display warning on the console. It was entirely done through public communication / announcement.
Still, the whole defective batch was successfully recalled without any causality.
But it might be that germanic speaking countries might be a little bit better organised than the US.
Still, if they can manage to recall a dumb spa, whereas Samsung and the US cell carriers are unable to recall a connected device that can remotely display message and whose buyers are supposed to be easily traceable (for terrorism/emergency reasons), then there's a deep problem somewhere.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
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The problem is with the batteries becoming over-charged or over-discharged causing metallic lithium and oxygen bubbles to form. They react together and cause a fire. Either it's an issue with the protection circuitry failing to shut down the batteries when they are at max/min change (possibly an EE issue) or it's an issue with the batteries themselves not charging correctly such as reporting a false voltage and continuing to change or discharge (manufacturer issue). The latter is more likely since lipo protection circuitry is so common now they don't really need to reinvent the wheel, but trying to add an extra 1000 or so mAh to a battery could definitely cause a problem.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
I can't believe they ordered some cheap Chinese crap battery that explodes like something you'd get on ebay and stuck it in one of the premiere, top quality phones. They will now forever be associated with cheap Chinese parts. I'm sure that's totally worth all the money they saved on battery production.
The market WANTS removable batteries, and an a removable sdcard. The market wants this BADLY.
Samsung, you spurned the desires of the market, thinking you knew best.
You did this to accelerate planned obsolescence and force the purchase of replacement phones long before the service life of the electronics had reached a reasonable end. Had these batteries been removable, replacement of the faulty/dangerous parts would have been greatly simplified.
Samsung, you have not received a tenth of the market punishment that you deserve.
I think you are looking for fark.
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head
It's been plastered over news outlets for 10 days before this incident happened. I've even heard news of it on the radio.
Ignorance isn't an excuse.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
Good question, what would be a good smartphone that could be rooted and is under 100$ second-hand? Is the Galaxy S4 still a good choice?