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Samsung Could Face Second Recall As US Probes Burnt Phone (bloomberg.com)
The Federal Aviation Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission are investigating Wednesday's incident, when a passenger's phone emitted smoke on a Southwest Airlines plane readying for departure from Louisville, Kentucky. Bloomberg reports: "If it's the fixed phone and it started to smoke in his pocket, I'm going to guess there'll be another recall," said Pamela Gilbert, a former executive director of the consumer agency. "That just doesn't sound right." Samsung has been engulfed in crisis since the Note 7 smartphones began to burst into flames just days after hitting the market in August. The Suwon, South Korea-based company announced last month that it would replace all 2.5 million phones sold globally at that point. Samsung said it had uncovered the cause of the battery fires and that it was certain new phones wouldn't have the same flaws. The first indications of the existing recall's financial impact could be seen Friday with the company's release of earnings that rose at the slowest pace in five quarters. Operating income increased just 5.5 percent to 7.8 trillion won ($7 billion) in the three months ended Sept. 30.
I seem to remember a whole bunch of sock puppets talking about how this was all overblown the first time around.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I understand how sensitive authorities will be to any battery issue on the Note 7 post-recall, but nearly every Li-Ion phone model has had these kinds of thermal runaway events, including the iPhone. It's premature to start talking about a second recall before the investigation on the Southwest Airlines event has even started in earnest.
I know it helps with water resistance ease of manufacturing, but when will phone manufacturers reconsider the whole non removable battery issue? Apple was a leading "innovator" of this, now it's being adopted industry wide and we are seeing losses exceeding a billion dollars of valuation. A user removable battery would streamline much of a recall process while adding safety to boot.
Now if only a lack of a USB card and headphone jack would start fires we may see some actual positive changes.
Let's hope this doesn't lead to the typical FAA overreaction and banning of the use of any electronics in flight until they can spend years deciding that it's safe. Like how WiFi devices were going to start causing planes to drop out of the sky. And somehow cellular communication is still suspect (or at least it's suspected that it will result in a reduction of Airline revenue if people can use their own data and make calls in-flight using the standard cellular network).
Better known as 318230.
Just about all modern cellphones use a lithium polymer battery which will potentially explode or catch on fire if you damage / bend or drop the phone hard enough. If you've ever watched gizmoslip on youtube you'll notice that even iphones will get dangerously hot if you drop them hard enough. From what I heard the Note 7 had a failure rate of about 1/1000 which means even if you get something out of the bad batch the chance of it exploding is somewhat rare. Unfortunately this brings with it a lot of bad publicity and it probably won't be cheap for Samsung to replace all the bad phones.
Apple has had non-user replaceable batteries since the original iPhone (almost 10 years now) and they haven't lost a billion in valuation due to that.
I like Samsung phones, but I'm glad I didn't end up with a Note 7. But every corporation is out there trying to cut every corner they can, and this is the chance they are taking.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I read somewhere (sorry I forget where) that the problem may be that the Samsung phones have a 3500mWH (or something like that) battery which is significantly larger than the iPhones which (I think) are less than 2000. Are the batteries the same physical size? That, and I heard that they charge in roughly the same amount of time.
So does that mean that they are pumping in almost twice as much current? Is it possible to damage the battery that way? Can a battery store more energy by just overloading it?
Maybe Samsung can fix this problem by changing the software(?) in the phones so that they charge slower. Am I missing something? (Or a lot of things, I'm not a battery expert).
All of this would have been avoidable with removable batteries.
Lithium-Ion batteries are required to implement five separate safety systems to prevent these combustion events.
Samsung is having quality-control issues. If the batteries were removable, the situation would not be trashing the company, but this does serve poetic justice.
False argument. The fact that it doesn't exist yet doesn't mean it can't be built.
Many things like waterproof watches are sealed using 0.5mm O-rings. Google "0.5mm O-ring" if you don't believe me.
Would a 0.5mm O-ring add too much bulk to an iPhone? Don't be an idiot.
Plus: How exactly do you think the iPhone 7 is sealed? Unicorns and rainbows, or ... a rubber gasket and silicone gunk just like everything else?
Could people mess up the waterproof seal if they were allowed to take the back off? Sure, but that's their problem, not Apple's.
No sig today...
One lesson from this is that if the Note 7 had removable batteries, this all could have been a lot easier for Samsung to deal with.
I am not quite getting how/what it is that they managed to screw up so their batteries keep catching fire. How did this make it through Q/A the first time, and how is it that the so-called replacements are still having issues.
Thanks to you, the iPhone 7 is breaking all sales projections.
Keep up the good work!
Love,
-Tim
Huh? Somebody made a false claim about waterproofing.
I never once mentioned Apple vs. Samsung.
No sig today...
All is in the title.
And, my Fairphone does have removable batteries...
Herve S.
Well, what are those US probes doing burning the phone in the first place?!
I read somewhere (sorry I forget where) that the problem may be that the Samsung phones have a 3500mWH (or something like that) battery which is significantly larger than the iPhones which (I think) are less than 2000. Are the batteries the same physical size? That, and I heard that they charge in roughly the same amount of time.
So does that mean that they are pumping in almost twice as much current? Is it possible to damage the battery that way? Can a battery store more energy by just overloading it?
Maybe Samsung can fix this problem by changing the software(?) in the phones so that they charge slower. Am I missing something? (Or a lot of things, I'm not a battery expert).
Yes!
And I pointed this EXACT THING out a few days ago right here on Slashdot, when this story about the Southwest Airlines fire first broke.
By the way, Samsung HAS apparently already made it possible to defeat "Fast Charge mode"; so they KNOW what the problem is; they just don't want to admit that it takes TWICE as long to charge an S7 than it does an iPhone 6 or 7, for an advantage of only (maybe) 6% better battery-life, because the S7 is simply a POS battery-hog of a design.
His theory was cheapo amazon or chinese usb c cables.
Galaxy s5. Close enogh, better screen to size ratio.
Knox counters to track me loading a new ROM? Samsung, you can keep them - we're done.
Removable batteries can be removed from the device. This has many benefits.
As batteries age and lose capacity, they can be replaced by the user at minimal cost.
Users can carry a spare battery with them if they're going to be without access to a charger for whatever reason.
If a phone crashes you can always reboot it by pulling the battery.
In the event of a battery recall, new batteries can be distributed and bad batteries can be collected while users keep their phones at all times. This is faster and cheaper than recalling and servicing/replacing phones.
If you need to be sure your phone is off for security/privacy/whatever you can pull the battery.
If water gets into your phone you can pull the battery and rice bag it. (And yes, water can still get into phones rated to IP67 or IP68.)
If your phone is dropped the battery and whatever holds it in place act as impact absorbers. My phone has been dropped a few times and the worst that has happened is the back plate popping off and the battery flying out. The more tightly built your brick is the more likely it is that energy will transfer to your screen and shatter it.
Samsung S5 - Headphone Jack, USB, and replaceable back.
Once again Apple claims innovation that existed for several years. And sadly the rest of the industry has followed blindly into this corner, leaving me without any upgrade path for 3+ years now.
--WooooHoooo--
Users can carry a spare battery with them if they're going to be without access to a charger for whatever reason.
Not always a good idea, unless the battery has protection that prevents shorting, even if put in a pocket with keys, nail clippers and small change.
But yes, I like changeable batteries. My last phone, I had two battery chargers and two spare batteries - one at home, and one at work. I could easily switch out the battery in either place, without the inconvenience and personal risk of carrying an extra incendiary device.
If people could just replace the battery when it gets old, many people would choose not to buy new phones.
That is the primary reason why they are becoming less common. They interfere with planned obsolescence. Any other reason you may hear is just attempted rationalization.
Samsung Galaxy S5 dimensions: 145.3 x 73.4 x 8.9 mm, 170.1 g
iPhone 7 dimensions : 138.3 x 67.1 x 7.1 mm, 138 g
I won't even bother with the benchmarks, because we're comparing phones that are 2+ years apart--but obviously the iPhone kills the S5.
You ever think that maybe the reason Samsung has followed Apple on the integrated battery (etc.) is because they can't compete otherwise?
Um, the fact that it doesn't exist doesn't mean it can be built, you know. You're talking about adding stuff to the phone without taking up volume or weight, and that's got some inherent problems.
If the battery isn't replaceable, it doesn't need its own shell, and since the connections with the phone are inside the case they don't need their own waterproofing. The phone case isn't arbitrarily broken up to fit a battery, and hence can be made inherently stronger. Make it replaceable and you're adding at least two layers of metal or plastic inside the phone. You need to have secure attachment points, and a connector that is waterproof in itself and will work with lots of plugging and unplugging. You're probably going to have to thicken the phone casing to keep strong. You're likely to be unable to make the battery a little smaller to conform to the battery casing you select rather than conforming to whatever space is available in the phone interior. The cumulative effects may be small, but they will exist.
Does your waterproof watch have an easily removable battery? If not, it's completely irrelevant.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes