Samsung Halts Galaxy Note 7 Production Temporarily (wsj.com)

Samsung is halting production of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone after the replacement units -- the second batch of Note 7 produced -- by Samsung also seemed to be riddled with a similar issue, with nearly half a dozen of explosion and burning issues in the past week alone. Yonhap News Agency, and the WSJ are both reporting that the halt was done in cooperation with safety regulators from South Korea, China and the United States. From a WSJ report: Samsung's move comes after a spate of fresh reports of problems with replacement phones that have been distributed to consumers around the world. While Samsung hasn't confirmed the reports, it said in a statement Friday in response to one report that it would "move quickly to investigate the reported case to determine the cause and will share findings as soon as possible."

Comments

Too much thin phones and thin batteries

[samjam]

I think the quest for ever thinner phones and ever thinner batteries is to blame.
I want thicker phones with longer life.

I also think a battery-only recall would have been cheaper, so there is a lot to be said for removable batteries too.
I want user-replaceable batteries

I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I do know what I want.

Re:Too much thin phones and thin batteries

[rtb61]

Sounds much more like an overheating CPU too close to a way to cheap poorly insulated battery (internal batteries are much cheaper than user replace able batteries). The CPU alters the conditions of the battery, so the battery generates more heat, heating the CPU which heats the battery (higher temperatures more electrical resistance, leading to higher temperatures). So the design is inherently bad and the phone has to be scrapped IMHO they kind of deserve it for removing user replacebale batteries from Notes, https://www.youtube.com/watch?..., I am a bad man ;D.

Re:Too much thin phones and thin batteries

[Zuriel]

Phones have temperature sensors and will stop charging if the battery temperature gets too high, or throttle the CPU or even power off entirely if it gets too hot. Unless you leave it on the dash of your car in summer and the device can't control its temperature, heat can't really cause a catastrophic failure like this. It's more likely to be the battery developing an internal short circuit due to a manufacturing fault in my opinion. There's no way to handle that besides better quality control.

Re:Impossible

[frnic]

It can't be over priced if the market is bearing that price. The value of any product is exactly what the public is willing to pay for it.

Re: Impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is the iPhone is not something essential and there are thousands of alternatives out there.

This never happened with my land-line phone!

[King_TJ]

This quest for ever thinner phones with their thin batteries is only to blame if you dislike the downsides of pushing technology forward.

Any time you demand a considerable amount of energy storage in a small package, it has a certain amount of danger of catching fire or exploding.

We've randomly seen various models of laptops catch fire or explode too, and many of those weren't all that thin, nor would you describe their batteries as "thin" -- especially compared to any smartphone ever manufactured.

I can't say I know exactly where Samsung is failing this particular time, since competitors have similar sized devices with similar sized batteries that are clearly working more reliably? But it sounds like they wrote things off as a simple battery production defect when it might turn out to be a more complicated problem to fix. (As someone else said - maybe they have the battery sitting too close to the CPU or other chips that help warm it up past a safe operational parameter?)

Value of something IS what the market will bear

[sjbe]

That's a dangerous way to think.

Products ARE worth what people are willing to pay for them. That is a cold stone fact. It's not a "dangerous way to think" because it's simply the truth. You fail to acknowledge that truth at your peril. It's like saying gravity is a dangerous way to think. That argument makes no sense because it implies that a law of nature is somehow a point of view. It isn't. Products are worth what the market will bear is in economics as close to a fundamental law of nature as you will find. It's right up there with supply and demand effects on price.

It is that kind of thinking that leads to 500% increases in the cost of life saving drugs just for the heck of it

Which is why most sane countries regulate the price of drugs to avoid that exact circumstance because health care is needed by everyone. And even in the crazy US we regulate a lot of markets (electricity, telephone, water, etc) where there is a risk of a utility abusing its monopoly on a product. The value of a product is what people are willing to pay for it. When the consequences of not paying for it are possible death, the value of that product can be very high if there is no alternative source for it.

So no, the value of something isn't what the market will bear, otherwise you'd be paying millions for clean air.

You are conflating some very different things. First off we ARE paying millions (billions really) for clean air as a society. The price of it is rolled into the cost of the products you buy. Those environmental regulations aren't free. (and that's not a bad thing either) Second, we are perfectly capable of regulating monopolies to keep them from getting out of hand. We do this all the time. Third, the value of something in economic terms absolutely IS what people are willing to pay for it. Some things are public goods and we have to be careful about ensuring they remain so but the value of fresh water or breathable air is tremendously high - we've just organized our legal system to ensure they are available to all.

Re:more than just thinner

[houghi]

From your article:
It appears likely that the phone sustained some damage while it was being transported. The kind of battery used in the iPhone and other handsets are almost always safe, but can be incredibly dangerous â" if they are punctured, they can easily explode or set fire, taking the rest of the phone with it.
The phone did appear to be dented and damaged beyond the kind of issues that would be caused by heat.
But that also suggests that the new problems hitting the iPhone are not on the level of the exploding Note 7, which necessitated a global recall and has been a disaster for the company. No further problems with the iPhone 7 have yet been reported and it appears that the problem is likely to be isolated.

(Emphasis is mine)