Samsung Ships Flameproof Boxes For Note 7 Returns (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Samsung has been forced to cease production of its disastrous Galaxy Note 7 Smartphones because they keep catching fire, but it still has to address the problem of cleaning up its mess. The phone has been recalled twice, and owners now have to send their incendiary handsets back to the South Korean firm. And that poses a bit of a problem: if you need to issue a recall for a phone that is prone to spontaneously combust, you don't want those phones catching fire in transit. Samsung's solution is a fancy "Note 7 Return Kit," and it has sent one to XDA Developers. The kit contains a special "Recovery Box" that's lined with ceramic fiber paper to provide some protection against incineration. Samsung warns that some people will have a bad reaction to this lining, so the recovery kit also includes some gloves to protect your hands. They don't appear to be flame retardant, so if your Note 7 is currently ablaze, we'd suggest minimizing contact with it. Samsung also includes a shipping label to send the phone back. The box reinforces that flying ban, noting that the devices are only to be shipped by ground, safely within reach of the quenching hoses of the fire department.

Comments

This could have been a simple battery recall

[sinij]

This could have been a simple battery recall if they still used removable batteries.

Re:This could have been a simple battery recall

[alvinrod]

That may not be the case though. There's been a lot of speculation that it wasn't a battery issue (at least not entirely) but also something related to the overall device design, which is further supported since they've stopped production entirely. Given that there were multiple replacement units that had problems within a week of them going out to customers, it's difficult to accept the idea that it was just a battery issue unless Samsung completed screwed the pooch on exchanging devices.

Removable batteries don't matter if the device itself is somehow leading to the problem for whatever (I've heard some ideas that its the CPU getting too hot, the case expanding/contracting and deforming the battery) reason. Perhaps Samsung could eventually engineer a battery that wouldn't be susceptible to whatever the underlying cause was, but how many months would that take to engineer and properly test and then how many more to produce enough to provide them to every customer. Most customers probably couldn't go without their device for that long, they probably couldn't travel with it even if they were still using it, and without really knowing the whole story or the scope of the problem, six months might by asking a non-trivial amount of people to play Russian roulette with their phone, which is a massive liability issue.

Yes, consumers really like having removable batteries, but if the device itself ensures a greatly reduced lifespan that results in a violent destruction of the battery, does it really matter if it's removable?

Re:This could have been a simple battery recall

[Zxern]

You are of course assuming Samsung wasn't using the cheapest Chinese crap batteries they could to begin with.

Re:This could have been a simple battery recall

[timrod]

The thing is, even if a removable battery doesn't cut down on fire incidents, it would have made the phones a lot easier to ship back to the manufacturer. Rather than go through all these hoops with fire-resistant boxes and ground-only shipping, they could simply have told people "Keep the phone powered off and bring it to an electronics recycler or an authorized seller to have the battery taken out and the phone shipped back to Samsung".

I can easily see UPS and Fedex refusing to ship the returned phones, since if it's a problem with the battery deforming most of the phones are going to be more dangerous crammed into the back of a cargo truck with a million other packages (all of which UPS/Fedex are liable for) than they would be anywhere else. If the phones could be shipped without the batteries inside, this problem wouldn't exist.

Instead, Samsung now has a very costly problem on their hands. They have to find a shipper willing to ship the phones (potentially making them more dangerous) and then recycle them without having anyone catch on fire.

Evidence please.

[Anonymous Coward]

They switched the battery cells in production for the first recall. If changing the battery didn't fix the problem, why would changing the battery easier fix it?

Re:Evidence please.

[HornWumpus]

Battery packs often contain current limiters.

If you're installing cells permanently, you will be tempted to do cute things with the charge circuit.

Individual cell charging is common in the RC world. (Chargers are complicated, the market is mostly junk.) It is also common to charge batteries in fire-proof bags.

Lithium batteries in consumer products need to be handled with caution. They aren't $300+ jumbo airplane batteries. If one dying cell kills the pack, that's a fair tradeoff for simplicity plus another level of current limiter.

Re:Evidence please.

[dgatwood]

These are LiPo batteries we're talking about. AFAIK, they're always a single cell, and I don't think they typically contain any circuitry. If they did, they'd have a four-wire connector like lithium ion packs, rather than two. (Or at least all the flat packs I've seen only have the two wires.)

Other alternatives

[Dan East]

It would be safer if the devices were frozen in carbonite for return shipping.

This is completely normal for battery recalls

[Xylantiel]

I had a battery recall on a NVIDIA tablet and the return kit was a fireproof box that required ground shipping. And they weren't exploding, just failing early. This is standard procedure for any defective li-ion battery.

Re:Potentially unlawful ?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is what the special box with markings indicating the contents, and prepaid ground postage are for. This isn't the first device with a defective li-ion battery and UPS has procedures in place to deal with it.

Re:Smartphone?

[Visarga]

Beep Blup Bop! I am a bot. I will send a message to the user "Anonymous Coward" when somebody invents a smartphone.

Re:You first.

[hey!]

Let's practice a little logic here, shall we?

Having a problem in the battery cells or pack does not preclude having a problem in the "controller chip" or any other system component. But are we multiplying entities here unnecessarily? Gratuitously attributing failure to the battery when the fires could be attributed to other system components?

No. Because li-ion battery design is supposed to prevent fires in the case of other system components/software being faulty. This is because that battery chemistry is inherently fire-prone: you have a flammable organic electrolyte bathing electrodes that release oxygen, with the entire system subject to thermal runaway. Therefore Li-ion battery packs have to be designed, like a Norman castle, according to the principle of defense-in-depth. It follows directly that any battery fires when the pack is installed in the system require failures in depth.