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US Issues Emergency Ban On Flying With Samsung Galaxy Note 7, Offenders May Face Criminal Prosecution (transportation.gov)
Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphone will be banned from aircraft in the United States starting at noon EDT (1600 GMT) under an emergency order, regulators said on Friday. Among other penalties, those who attempt to circumvent the ban could be subjected to criminal prosecutions, the regulators added. Quartz reports: On Friday (Oct. 14), US Department of Transportation announced that passengers would no longer be able to bring the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 onto any flight in the United States. There have been nearly 100 reported cases of the phones catching on fire and spewing noxious black smoke, an undesired situation in an airplane's enclosed cabin. "Individuals who own or possess a Samsung Galaxy Note7 device may not transport the device on their person, in carry-on baggage, or in checked baggage on flights to, from, or within the United States," the US DOT statement said. Any travelers who violate the ban could be subject to criminal prosecution and fines. Samsung is expected to see a $5.3 billion loss in profits from the entire fiasco, mainly the cost of recalling, stopping production, and destroying phones.Samsung said it will send a text message to all Note 7 users to let them know about this ban.
The ban on carrying phones in checked bags is in TFS. I expected the good ol' Slashdotter to not read TFA but really, not even TFS properly?
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Don't take his word for it
http://gizmodo.com/an-iphone-i...
http://www.cultofmac.com/29186...
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2016/...
https://www.cnet.com/news/ipho...
http://www.pcr-online.biz/news...
https://9to5mac.com/2014/02/22...
http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/02/...
http://bgr.com/2016/10/03/ipho...
http://bgr.com/2016/09/29/ipho...
http://bgr.com/2016/09/30/ipho...
http://bgr.com/2016/10/03/ipho...
And those are just the first two pages of Google links. It's not just Apple - all phones do this. All phones with lithium batteries have a chance of entering thermal runaway. It's inherent in the materials. That said, the Note 7 was close to two orders of magnitude above what a consumer device really should be in terms of spontaneous combustion. Still low probability, but too high for the disruptive nature of and heat generating device on an operating aircraft.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
So, having gone through your links in more detail than you apparently did, it looks like you posted some dupes (#3 is a dupe report of #1 and #11 is the exact same link as #8), fell victim to a clickbait headline (#10 "blew up" in the sense that the iPhone bulged, not that it caught fire), and failed to account for incidents that were likely caused by trauma done to the device prior to any fireworks (as was the case for #4 and #7-9, all of which mention the user doing something that likely damaged the device).
That leaves us with four distinct incidents that don't have an immediate explanation (#1, 2, 5, and 6).
...since 2011.
...no two of which were for the same iPhone model.
That's about as close to a textbook example for "isolated incident" as you can get, given the tens of millions of iPhones sold during that time and that are currently in use worldwide. We expect to see a handful of isolated fires, given that thermal runaway events are a known issue with LiOn devices, but in a well-designed device, they should occur infrequently enough for them to not be a major concern, and that's exactly what we see from the examples you cited.