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Samsung Permanently Discontinues Galaxy Note 7 (twitter.com)
After the replacement units of Galaxy Note 7 also started to catch fire, Samsung is now permanently discontinuing its latest flagship smartphone (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternate source), the company said today. The news comes a day after Samsung halted sales of Note 7 once again and began asking users to return the device. So far nearly 50 incidents of Note 7 causing fires have been reported. More importantly, many people have been physically injured with their new Galaxy phone catching fire. WSJ reports: Samsung said in a filing with South Korean regulators on Tuesday that it would permanently cease sales of the device, a day after it announced a temporary halt to production of the smartphones. "Taking our customer's safety as our highest priority, we have decided to halt sales and production of the Galaxy Note 7," the company said. The move comes on a day when Samsung shares tumbled 8%, its biggest one-day decline in eight years, amid increasing pressure after a new string of reported smartphone fires in the U.S.
I heard about the touch disease. But not the phones exploding when using approved devices. There were some issues a while back where people got some third party chargers that they were plugging there phone straight into the AC socket.
As for the Touch Disease it is a problem but it isn't affecting people's safety.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's not a dupe. The previous story talked about Samsung halting sales of Note 7. The company has since changed its stand on the matter. Please read before commenting.
Heads are going to roll all around after an event like this one.
Somebody will probably end up writing a book on what went on inside, because I imagine that the internal meetings had some serious drama involved.
I hope there's going to be a post-mortem at some point, because it would be very interesting to find out what went wrong in the end. Rogue manufacturer? Bad quality control? Maybe the phone doing something wrong with charging, as somebody suggested on reddit?
That in 20 years you can sell to a collector for about a grand.
It costs almost a grand today!!
Too bad they didn't have a removable battery.
Yep, I think I already mentioned we can expect a Note 8 really soon with much of the same hardware, but a better nonexplosive battery and maybe a Snapdragon 821.
How is this possible if only 50 phone fires have been reported and the majority of those reports are unsubstantiated? Is this a new use of the word "many" that I have been unaware of? Does the word "many" mean "extremely few compared to the number of sold phones" in this context?
I think "many" can legitimately mean "more than one single freak accident" in the context of an exploding consumer device.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Kind of funny how people call Apple users "worshippers" and "fanboys" while at the same time pretending Samsung's exploding phones are just a minor problem that people shouldn't make such a fuss about, on the same level as a touch display glitch.
Worshipping Samsung a little too much, perhaps?
if they are unwilling to make a phone with user replaceable battery, serves them right. this could have been so much cheaper for them.
Get some perspective man.
Samsung's phones are a health hazard. They could kill you.
Apples touch disease, though unnaceptable from a consumer point of view, falls squarely in the domain of "first world problems". They won't kill you. They won't harm you. They'll just cause you a slight annoyance (having to ask Apple for a replacement, which, depending on specifics, they might do for free).
Also, the instances of Apple devices catching fire are extremely rare, and are caused by mishandling the device (like, for example, using some crap charger).
Samsung's instances are caused by a defect that they themselves have already admitted existing. Though they haven't exactly clarified what they've fucked up, leaving people - such as yourself - a thin hope that it might just be a bad batch of batteries, totally ignoring that a) replacing the batteries didn't fix the problem and b) that there are only a handful of battery suppliers, and they supply everyone else.
A manufacturing defect on the batteriez would not just affect Samsung devices, they would affect everyone's devices.
Who are you accusing of hating here? The Wall Street Journal for publishing this article? Samsung for discontinuing the model? Or maybe msmash for submitting the story here?
Is this not a newsworthy topic? Is this not a current red-hot issue in the tech world? Is this not news for nerds?
How is it that you think that this is a political issue, or one driven by hate? Do you think that we should meekly accept phones that explode on us? You accuse others of being fanbois, but I can't think of any excuse to wanting us to remain silent on this issue other than you being a fanboi yourself.
Agreed. I use iOS and I'm not happy Samsung is having these problems. Maybe I'm one of those weirdos who sees no reason to get tribalistic over corporations.
Pro tip: corporations are neither a friend nor a banner to which you should rally. Their goal is to sell stuff.
Wow, can you imagine the amount of upset this will cause to the supply chain and also to the thousands of people involved in designing, building, and who were supposed to sell this phone?
The assembly and manufacture of these phones employs thousands of people, spins up parts supply chains for years (and already did for months in preparation), and was planned to use a significant chunk of the global capacity of glass, machine tools, electronic components, transportation, labor, etc. Now which all will have to find new places to go, which will take more than a few months.
Regardless of how you feel about Samsung in general, the "hidden", not as public, effects of this very big mistake will affect many, many peoples' lives in a real way (aside from a handful of people at the top).
It's totally legitimate to contrast the pooh-poohing of Samsung completely abandoning a flagship product over safety problems with how Slashdot would be reacting if this were Apple
Moderating this as flamebait is silly. Having a user-replaceable battery is a desirable feature, at least for me.
To be fair to Samsung, they acted quickly (for a large corporation) and did the right thing with an recall and then halting production. Compare to Apple, who typically deny the problem for a few years and then create a repair scheme for people who didn't already discard the device or pay to have the hardware fixed. Usually seems to require a class action lawsuit too.
Samsung aren't perfect by a long way, and I don't buy their hardware any more because of lack of features and their annoying Android skin, but compared to Apple... Well, you can't really compare them, can you? Apple knew about the bending problems, didn't do anything, denied warranty replacements and is now in denial about the inevitable failures resulting from repeated flexing a year down the line.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Editor's note: Submitters and editors should note that it is best to open a private browsing window and manually remove session ID gobblegook from URL to test a link. Greetz BugMeNot, works sometimes.
For small pocket devices WE HAVE EXCEEDED PEAK LI-ON BATTERY AREA and especially LENGTH. Samsung should retool the G7 to contain two or three smaller 'proven' Lion battery packages with separate charging circuits. It is possible that a manufacturing variance ultimately related to area is fooling the charge circuit and making these more susceptible to overcharge. There is also physical stress, another trigger. Batteries should not straddle the middle of the device where the most butt-pocket deformation will occur.
Hmm. Wonder why the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, SE, 7 and 7 Plus don't have these issues, even though they are just as thin (implying just as "butt-bendy") and, as this picture clearly shows, don't "segment" their batteries. Oh, I know: They don't try to charge their battery to 2X recommended temperature just to claim a "Fast Charge": with a huge battery, in an attempt to compensate for their power-hog design.
I don't believe that this is anything to do with the physical size of the cells; tablets and laptops have much bigger cells. This is more likely a new anode material - to provide a higher energy density - that maybe wasn't completely understood before it was shipped. If you don't understand it, you can't keep it safe. The issues could also be related to hotspots on the battery, where circuitry close to one point on the cell causes non-uniform heating - you then see a catastrophic failure even though the battery temp sensor is reading a safe temperature. All speculation though, obviously.
I've not kept up with the latest Li-Ion tech but as you see the nominal & max charge voltage creep up from 3.7v/4.2v, that's a sign of new anode tech. Last time I looked we were up to 3.8v/4.32v or so.
Generally, battery engineers are HUGELY conservative people. They know they're responsible for a potential bomb that often resides millimeters from a human body; better safe than sorry.
Note that carriers - initially at&t as I remember - started requiring that devices pass IEEE1725 certification for battery safety in... I think 2009? This submission and testing process is pretty comprehensive including fault tree analysis and being able to keep the battery safe even with two concurrent failures (eg overvoltage protection circuit dying AND current control being lost). I would guess Samsung had to pass this certification, which is supposed to ensure that people aren't cutting corners.
For a LOT more detail see http://www.ctia.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/ctia-certification-requirements-for-battery-system-compliance-to-nbsp-ieee-1725.pdf?sfvrsn=0
I used to work at Apple on iPhone hardware, and back in the day we tested competitor hardware to see what they did in IEEE1725 cases. The old Samsung phones definitely did NOT enforce the safe discharge temperature limits - as I remember we had Samsung Galaxy (first version) running happily at 90C which was not compliant... an iPhone would have entered thermal trap and shut down totally about 30C before that point.
(posting as AC because, well, Apple)