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Replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Phone Catches Fire on Southwest Plane (theverge.com)
After learning about faulty battery issues in its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, Samsung said it will offer its existing customers a safe, replacement unit. It appears the replacement unit also suffers from the same issue. Jordan Golson, reporting for The Verge: Southwest Airlines flight 944 from Louisville to Baltimore was evacuated this morning while still at the gate because of a smoking Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphone. All passengers and crew exited the plane via the main cabin door and no injuries were reported, a Southwest Airlines spokesperson told The Verge. More worryingly, the phone in question was a replacement Galaxy Note 7, one that was deemed to be safe by Samsung. The Verge spoke to Brian Green, owner of the Note 7, on the phone earlier today and he confirmed that he had picked up the new phone at an AT&T store on September 21st. A photograph of the box shows the black square symbol that indicates a replacement Note 7 and Green said it had a green battery icon.A spokesperson for Southwest Airlines said, "prior to the Southwest Airlines Flight 994 departing from Louisville for Baltimore, a customer reported smoke emitting from an electronic device. All customers and crew deplaned safely via the main cabin door. Customers will be accommodated on other Southwest flights to their final destinations. Safety is always our top priority at Southwest and we encourage our customers to comply with the FAA Pack Safe Guidelines."
do people have cameras ready, and immediately photograph something that caught fire, and the box it came in which was curiously brought along on the flight, for immediate publishing on the Internet? It seems as if the whole idea was to create even more bad press for the biggest foreign competitor in the U.S. phone market.
You must be new here. Everywhere I've gone in the past couple of years there have been cell phone cameras out and recording for anything remotely out of the ordinary and usually for perfectly mundane events (getting on a plane). The odds of any event in the US (and probably Europe and most parts of Asia) being photographed and / or videoed is getting awfully close to 1 these days.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The smoke is potentially pretty toxic, the device gets extremely hot (cannot be handled without high-temp gloves) and you cannot put out a lithium fire. You have to let it burn, maybe put sand on it. Hence removing it without making the problem worse is tricky. On the other hand, you can get the passengers out fast (airplanes are designed for that) and that will put everyone in a safe situation reliably. Hence the decision to evacuate is the only right choice here.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
"But we fired the whole QA department last year and saved a bunch of money. You were happy at the time, boss... remember?"
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
We all know there's workarounds, but they're clunky. It's annoying that my iPhone 7 is more cumbersome to do the things just worked out of the box with my iPhone 6, yes I know I can get bluetooth headphones, which I did but on a long haul flight they don't last and don't work in airplane mode anyway. So now I need another set of headphones and a headphone+charge adapter.
That's not the sort of regression in user experience I'm used to with Apple's products. The other issue with it is the inconsistency, the lightning port isn't available on any Mac so the lightning-only headphones they ship with the iPhone (without any lightning to 3.5mm adapter) don't even work with my other Apple products.
Now I'm sure you'll leap to their defence with all the possible workarounds but the fact is the user experience is now worse, this is a downgrade, not an upgrade and usually Apple handles these things so well so this is disappointing but it's ok it's an annoyance and you can admit that.