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Samsung Orders the Global Shutdown of Both Sales and Exchanges of Galaxy Note 7 (betanews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BetaNews: Sigh. The Galaxy Note 7. What should have been a wildly popular and successful smartphone has become a synonymous with failure, and fodder for jokes. As everyone knows, the phone has been exploding and catching fire, creating serious risk for consumers. The phone was eventually recalled and replaced, although that process was bungled by Samsung -- there was much confusion. Not to mention, there was criticism that the recall was not initially an official one. With the issues seemingly in the rear view mirror, the scandal was over, right? Wrong. Now, the replacement models are reportedly exploding too. Enough is apparently enough. Following rumors that production of the phone was being ceased, today, Samsung orders the global shutdown of both sales and exchanges of Galaxy Note 7. Samsung has formally issued the following statement: "We are working with relevant regulatory bodies to investigate the recently reported cases involving the Galaxy Note 7. Because consumers' safety remains our top priority, Samsung will ask all carrier and retail partners globally to stop sales and exchanges of the Galaxy Note 7 while the investigation is taking place. We remain committed to working diligently with appropriate regulatory authorities to take all necessary steps to resolve the situation. Consumers with either an original Galaxy Note 7 or replacement Galaxy Note 7 device should power down and stop using the device and take advantage of the remedies available."
Because giving away phones doesn't make any money?
I doubt that Apple wants to be holding them when they explode either.
The Ford Pinto of mobile phones.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Also, turn off your S7 if it's smoking, unless the smoking light is on or you're in the West.
In the event of a plane crash, you can use your S7 to light a signal flare.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Just think with all those possible exploding phones coming back for replacement. The stores are going to be dangerous places with all those Note 7's sitting in boxes until they can ship them out. Not even sure the cargo airlines would want to permit them on board either.
This whole thing has been a fiasco. Bad engineering. Bad public relations. Hiding their knowing that there was a problem. Being forced into a recall, and even then, botching the "fix". I am sure there are a number of people now considering if they want a Samsung phone, whether Note 7 or other, now, or ever, to reside in their pocket. This is definitely going to leave a mark.
On the flip side, Apple really appreciates that they decided to torch their sales (literally) right as the iPhone 7 was coming out. Glad Samsung decided to join team Apple. :)
It most certainly can if you can recover the costs by capturing the customers in Apple's ecosystem.
This would be a variation of the razor-blade model of sales.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
exploding and catching fire
Following in the footsteps of their previous hit series, this hot new drams depicts a "fictionalized" insider's view of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 revolution...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
There apparently were several other reports over the last weeks of replacements catching fire.
Note that he acceptable number is ZERO. No other phone makers, Android or Apple, appear to have a problem on this scale. No other phone makers, Android or Apple, have had planes catch fire in years on an actual plane...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well, its not actually, but the stuff leaking out of there is probably worse.
Nobody is a 'Fandroid.'
A small subsection of the Applephone users are fanatical zealots. A larger group are just people with phones. And Android phones are just what The Rest Of Us choose to use.
I can't help but think that the issues that Samsung is having with exploding Note 7 batteries could have been greatly reduced by having a user-replaceable battery.
Have a bad battery? It can be replaced in seconds instead of having to ship it back to a factory for refurbishment.
Personally, I believe that making the battery non-replaceable had nothing to do with the aesthetics and everything to do with planned obsolecence. This seems to have backfired on them (excuse the pun).
I do love my Galaxy Note 4, and I do feel Samsung got that phone right. When the Note 5 came out I avoided it because it dropped the microSD slot (as well as the replaceable battery). Now the microSD is back in the Note 7, and I was considering it despite the lack of replaceable battery, but certainly not now.
There is a market there for people who want Phablets with a stylus, and only two current options are the Note 7 (well, not now) or the LG Stylus 2 (which is, by all reviews, underpowered). Now would be a perfect time for a company like LG to step in with high end phablet with stylus.
And that's why Android phones suck, and why Apple makes 90% of the profits in mobile.
The Rest Of Us are people who don't give a shit.
If the phone is as good as people say they are, then they will make a customer that will purchase more phones in the future.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Why hasn't the NSA taken advantage of this, and airlifted a few hundred thousand to Puty's new-old KGB? "With love, from the US of A, Good Luck on Cold War 2; PS We preinstalled Plants Vs. Zombies 3!"
I have not seen a single thing about refunds. REFUNDS.
It's either trade-in your. . . OOPS, not allowed to do that now.
Or it's. . . what? sit on your $100's device, wondering if they will ever issue refunds, and be without a smartphone? Or let it be a brick, and drop $100's more on a competing smartphone?
This "all sales and replacements stop" is really putting the pinch on the consumers. Many save up for months before buying a new smartphone. It is a really dick move by Samsung to their actual customers – purchasers of their products. Their Board of directors would have no profits to maximize if no consumers bought their products.
But won't Note 7 customers burned by Samsung *already* be looking at Apple now?
Of course they will, they have no choice. Everyone know the only two phone manufacturers are Samsung and Apple.
Oh, wait! For most people, it's the Android experience they're after. Kind of hard to get that while walled up in the Apple jail.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
Can we pretty-please, with sugar on top, not refer to: Explode? As an old electronics guy who has seen more than his share of fried electronics, the word "Explode" does not compute with low-voltage electronics. Smoked? Burned? Yes! Explode? No!!!
This is going to haunt them for a while.
Yeah, I'm sure that Samsung is dropping their flagship phone product and undergoing a second recall that will do billions of dollars worth of damage to customer confidence because it's just one replacement that had a problem.
Or, maybe they know more about the issue then they are releasing? Perhaps it's a fundamental design flaw that will take more than swapping some battery cells?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
New model, just announced. They're replacing it with the Samsung HCF 2.
Except that if you really didn't give a shit, you wouldn't be so eager to stuff in something about Apple sales figures.
So you can stop bothering with the too-cool-to-care BS now.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Oh well if Brian Green did that, then iPhone must be just the same. Thanks for the update.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Looks like the smart thing is to not buy a new, just rolled out phone or tablet, Samsung or any other brand. Apple too has had its share of fails, even though none so explosive as this one. Good thing that economic reality has forced me to lag a generation or two behind the state of the art a long time ago :)
Oh, and the Note 7 is the only phone made by Samsung.
I two of them, zero problems, and it's a great device. The extremely small chance of a fire really doesn't have me very worried. It amazes me that Samsung recalled eleventeen billion phones over a few dozen confirmed reports of issues.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Or maybe the battery is now fine at more or less fullfilling their promises... ...but it's the charger that is completely over taxed.
Phone plugged into the provided charger are okay (charger can output all the phone pulls), phone plugged into high quality 3rd party are okay (charger limits what the phone can pull from it).
But phone plugged into cheap no-name Asian sub-5$ knockoffs have the charger overheat, melt, short itself and fry the smartphone.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
There's certifications to pass for the battery by itself, which means those safety circuits end up back on the battery again.
You mean the safety circuits present on that USD 3.95 USB charger from eBay (shipping free), from that seller with 300 positive review (nearly all of them review appearing in the week before he posted the selling of saif USB Charger ?) :-D
Or the safety circuits present on that "10'000mAh!!! Long-lige!!!! Hi-quality!!!!" battery from Shenzen ?
Well at least Samsung can look on the bright side: now they can clearly shift the blame to shitty after-market parts.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Worse still, having the job of the controller done by the main phone CPU instead of dedicated hardware. Botching it like that brings down cost, but if something glitches (and the more complicated something is, the more likely it will glitch) then, well. SACF!
On the other hand, they are Samsung. It's still a known brand that cares a tiny bit about their reputation and are going to put some minute efforts into the quality.
It's not of those clowns that mass-produced self-balancing board (handle-bar-less segway clones. A.k.a.: "Hoverboard") at 200 $ a piece and managed such a low price by throwing all safeties and even good practices out of the window.
There's probably a dedicated hardware charging controller.
It's probably on the same die as the rest of the SoC, to cut down on costs (so, I a way, you *are* correct when you say "done by the CPU"), but it's probably an autonomous circuit that isn't affected by the CPU re-booting.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Precisely! This is a high margin phone, and Apple has an impressive market share in its own right w/o giving it away. Better question would have been - why doesn't Microsoft try to grab market share by offering discounted exchanges?
Because giving away phones doesn't make any money?
They can make it up in volume.
If I understand what the problem is, Samsung tried to squeeze the battery into a slightly too thin phone. While this might not present a problem out of the box, nor for the vast majority of owners, all it would take to cause a failure is to bend over to pick something up with the phone in your back pocket. This might not cause an immediate failure, nor a failure be caused by only one flexing of the phone, but I can see many of them developing this problem over time. I think they made the right call. It seems to be a design problem with the phone, and it's too late to redesign and relaunch a new one.
IMHO phones are getting too thin for lithium ion batteries. They need to stiffen the bodies or find a safer power source.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
Uh, no. "Holding it wrong", like the bendy iPhone Plus, was a hateboi excuse to sit around and bitch about Apple. And like Bendgate, it was much worse with Samsung products than with Apple's - go check out that tumbler link and you'll see five Samsung devices where you're advised not to "hold it wrong". On the first page.
Projection, lack of self-awareness, putting on airs of moral superiority....straight up Fandroid talk right there.
Plus there's no such thing as 'an Android phone'. There are tons of them at various price points, and usually those say they tried 'an Android phone' and it was crap somehow never can remember the manufacturer and model.
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."