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More Lithium Battery Product Recalls Predicted (mercurynews.com)
While "the vast majority" of lithium-ion batteries will never malfunction, lithium itself "is highly combustible and batteries made with it are subject to 'thermal runaway'," which can be triggered by damage -- or by bad design. An anonymous reader quotes the San Jose Mercury News:
Battery and electronics manufacturers take numerous steps to try to mitigate such dangers... But while the industry has tried to make lithium-ion batteries safer, 'the technology itself isn't foolproof,' said Ravi Manghani, director of energy storage research at GTM Research... And there's reason to think that the problem could get worse before it gets better. Consumer demand for devices that are ever more powerful and longer lasting has encouraged manufacturers to make batteries that can hold even more charge. To do that, they typically pack the battery cells closer and closer together...
Since June of this year, educational toy company Roylco recalled 1,400 light tables designed for kids... Razor, Swagway and some eight other manufacturers recalled a total of 500,000 hoverboards. And HP and Sony between them recalled more than 42,000 notebook computers. All for similar reasons -- lithium-ion batteries that either had caught fire or which have posed a fire hazard... Other notorious examples include the several different Tesla Model S's that have caught fire, typically after crashes compromised their battery packs, and Sony's wide-scale recall a decade ago of the batteries that powered its Vaio and other laptop computers.
In a related story, Samsung's recall of their Note 7 is now expected to cost $5.3 billion.
Since June of this year, educational toy company Roylco recalled 1,400 light tables designed for kids... Razor, Swagway and some eight other manufacturers recalled a total of 500,000 hoverboards. And HP and Sony between them recalled more than 42,000 notebook computers. All for similar reasons -- lithium-ion batteries that either had caught fire or which have posed a fire hazard... Other notorious examples include the several different Tesla Model S's that have caught fire, typically after crashes compromised their battery packs, and Sony's wide-scale recall a decade ago of the batteries that powered its Vaio and other laptop computers.
In a related story, Samsung's recall of their Note 7 is now expected to cost $5.3 billion.
... will ultimately be passed to the consumer. No one seems to be talking about that. Samsung isn't just going to "lose" 5.3 billion dollars; they'll be marking up future hardware to finance it.
Make the devices thicker. Nobody wants a thin phone, just to put in in otterbox. Just make the device as thick as if it were in a case, and use the extra space for battery. On an iPhone you will get 3 times the battery if not more
I agree, I'm sick of the "my phone is thinner than yours" marketing spiel, how about my phone is more comfortable and easier to hold.
Any terrorist could turn a laptop into a bomb much more devastating than the guy who set his pants on fire or the shoe bomb that fizzled out. Why hasn't this happened yet and why hasn't DHS put a ban on all electronic devices with batteries on airplanes? Why can't I bring shampoo or toothpaste in my carry on but a lithium battery is fine?
. . . and the vast majority of them never spontaneously catch on fire.
It seems to me this battery is the one we've been waiting for. Yes a little less peak energy storage but it's thermal properties and lifetime mean that it can be recharged fast and will degrade less over the life of the phone. Effectively that means in practice the phone will perform better than Li ion. I don't think it's going to cost more either. Yes right now it is slightly pricier but it doesn't have the economy of scale working for it yet so the jury may be out on that.
Is it just thickness then? That's short sighted.
It does have one double edged sword. It's voltage is 3.2v so it's absolutely perfect for running 3.3v chips right off the battery without a regulator. 3.7v is slightly above many 3.3v chip max voltages so you end up with a regulator and that's a loss. You can run the 3.2v Lifepo4 all the way up to 3.6V at max charge but at anything less than 95% charge it's under 3.4v making it safe at all times for 3.3v electronics.
The flip side of beinbg below 3.6v is if you really do need a regulator for some reason then your V_drop has to be very small and you don't have much headroom above the minimum regulator voltage, or you have to drop the operating voltage down lower than 3 volts. A lot of 3.3v chips tend to start sucking current hard when you drop them below 3v so that headrooom matters in a big way.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I'm with you on slightly thicker phones, but the bad news is that would make it worse. You can make a case thick enough and light enough for a modern phone to contain the sudden runaway of a lithium battery. Making the case tighter and stronger just means you get a bigger bang when it does finally give. And using the case to put in a bigger battery - just more energy to dissipate when it goes off.
Besides - a thicker phone just means having to put an even bigger case on it. Nobody it buying cases to protect themselves from battery fires, they're doing it to protect the beautiful, fragile, and unrepairable surfaces of their $1000 phones. If manufacturers wanted to make a phone safe from drops, the would need only put a small elastomeric bumper around the edge as part of the assembly. The LG G3 even had an accessory back that had a rubber rim that surrounded and stood slightly proud of the edge on the front/glass side. They never even sold it outside of S Korea. The tactile feel of such a feature is "cheap", and these are premium devices. A thicker premium device made of scratchable glass and aluminum is going to be just at damage prone.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I think I said this a few weeks ago on my Facebook.
You can only pack so much charge into a lithium before the slightest knock will set it off.
The note 4/5 batteries aren't even designed to last even 2 years. The result of trying to push a higher capacity into a small physical size.
They pushed the envelope too far in the Note 7.
Stuart http://stuarthalliday.com/
In todays bleeding edge market, no one takes the time to properly test their components before shipping to market. They want to get the latest and greatest into the hands of the customer yesterday. What ever happened to Underwriter's Lab? We need something like that for cell phones, tablets, etc. Refuse to allow a company to sell products that haven't been tested for safety. Nah, what am I saying. Those corporations own the puppets who are supposed to make these laws. Never going to happen.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Something rarely discussed is the toxic fumes. The hobbiest flashlight community has done a lot of research on these batteries for the past decade. The fire is the absolute least of your worries. These batteries violently vent extremely toxic gas that causes severe damage when inhaled. If you breathe this in you should immediately seek emergency attention. I just haven't seen this mentioned enough and everyone should share.
Big companies simple don't care. They know these batteries are dangerous, but yet they still sell them. Why? GREED is GOOD.
Some researcher's speaking aspirationally. There are a lot of dogs not eating the dogfood. Whoever wanted these thin devices done just now on the consumer's dime is having a sad. Automakers, perhaps?
Anyway, this consumer demands a usable off-screen keyboard, easy to get to all 95 ASCII printable characters plus Enter, Tab and Esc. And not having on the order of a watt of microwave power mere millimeters from my BRAINS trying to talk to a BTS a kilometer or more away... this does NOT make sense, not even on Endor where carnivorous Wookies threw Ewoks into the radio link paths for entertainment and snacks. (note: not canon) Also, industry-standard connectors.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
It's catchy to slide in Tesla in unrelated articles but just because it uses batteries doesn't mean they are prone to fires.
The one that famously caught fire and torched a supercharger in Europe was caused by a genuine one-off assembly line defect.
The one that caught fire in France during a test drive was found to have a a faulty electrical connection.
The one that crashed on autopilot and "battery caught fire" actually didn't burned down: it smashed into a tree separating the front of the vehicle from the cabine, tearing the battery apart where a small number of cells separated from the rest and autopilot tesla crash fire caught fire, away from the vehicle and the rest of the battery pack. Driver dies of impact.
Another one caught fire due to hitting debris where car alerted driver to pull aside.
Complete list of EV fires exonerate batteries for the most part, as most EVs (Tesla and Chevy Volt) have liquid-cooled battery packs, unlike consumer electronics (esp. handheld devices).
I tol dem...
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
Here is a list of Knox supporting samsung phones:
https://www2.samsungknox.com/en/products/knox-supported-devices
anyone trying to use Knox to claim they have to have a latest flagship phone IS a moron.
Been saying this a while. Anyone with an electronics background that also knows anything about chemistry could tell you these Lithium Ion or polymer batteries are ticking time bombs, just waiting for an excuse to go off. Usually there are 3 backups. 1 in the phone (or charging device) and 2 in the battery. The charging circuit, will cut off current once it reaches the programmed level. The thermistor(s) in the battery, will tell the charging circuit to stop the current flow, if the battery heats up to whatever the cutoff level is. And the fail safe, is the thermal fuse. If all else fales, and the battery continues to heat up, the thermal fuse will melt in two pieces, which cuts off all current flow (and requiring the battery to be replaced, it is a one shot device). But, if the thermal fuse is close to the breakdown of the chemicals of the battery, it might be too late to prevent a thermal runaway. If phone manufacturers would stop cow-towing to the "fashion designers" in Hollywood and make phones that aren't "slim and stylish" for the lDIOT hollywood types that run around all the time with their phones in their hand, and start "beefing up" the cases, it would provide enough ROOM inside a phone, to go back to a removable battery. The batteries in non removable battery phones, typically do not have a protective plastic case surrounding them. That plastic case takes up room, room that can be used to increase the capacity of the battery, which given the manufacturers silly idea of continuing to increase the processor speed, screen density etc, need a bigger and bigger battery, in hopes it will make it through the entire day, without needing charging. Now, the problem is you combine a battery that can flex, that has as much capacity that they can squeeze into it, coupled with a very thin casing, then, place said phone, in your tight jeans back pocket, front pocket, and sit down and get up a few dozen times a day and that battery starts to flex. Once you break down the barrier shield that keeps everything separated (anode, cathode, electrolyte) and they all get together, you end up with a thermal runaway. People "think" they wanted thinner and thinner phones, because that's what the industry produced, and they go along like little sheep. Now, you are stuck with non removable batteries, thin phones and the result is BOOM! For Samsung's part, they tried to "one up" Apple, by releasing their phone, without really testing for durability. This time, it costs them DEARLY!
Not just thicker -- with a REPLACEABLE battery. Production batteries start having a problem? Instead of having to recall 3 billion dollars worth of phones, you can send out new batteries made conservatively, or even with completely different tech.
Non-replaceable batteries present a much broader spectrum of risks. All the manufacturers get out of it is a bit of thin, and the hope that your phone will seem unfixable to you when the battery dies.
They're treating the consumer very poorly.
And as long as the customer base can be kept from realizing that, they'll keep almost certainly doing it, too.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
> A lot of businesses give their employees a choice only between either the current Samsung flagship products or the iPhone [...]
This is a very important point you make (and many details in this thread, like the one about KNOX are very enligtening). To all those who say "but you, as a consumer, have a choice":
Corporate environment creates a captive market, where those up the hierarchy decide what *you* gotta use (those decision makers usually aren't bound by their own rules; that's their secretaries's job).
And other bigcorps have the people on staff trained and paid to influence above mentioned decision makers.
Free market my ass.
... will ultimately be passed to the consumer. No one seems to be talking about that. Samsung isn't just going to "lose" 5.3 billion dollars; they'll be marking up future hardware to finance it.
They aren't talking about it because it doesn't work that way. Samsung is in a competitive market for smartphones and cannot arbitrarily raise prices to make up for a previous loss. No one can, not even Apple. Think about it for just half a second. If they could have raised prices and still sold the same number of units they would have done that already. No, Samsung is going to eat this one. It's a big company and they can probably take the hit but losing that amount of money hurts even the biggest of companies.
Honestly Samsung is going to have to scramble to preserve their reputation. There are going to be a LOT of customers who won't be willing to take a chance on Samsung again after this debacle.
One or two mm extra thickness due to replaceable batteries won't scare off any consumer, so why not do it?
If you are asking the company doing it the answers include the following:
1) Customers demonstrably do not care if the battery is removable by their buying behavior. Other features are clearly more important.
2) Few customers ever removed the battery. Why put in a costly feature that almost nobody actually used?
3) Having a removable battery adds cost and customers demonstrably are not willing to pay extra for this feature given that few actually use it.
4) It eliminates third party batteries and the attendant quality problems from the party. (Yes ironic in the case of Samsung I know) It's hard enough to control quality when you control the supply chain. Much harder when you have to accommodate third party equipment, some of which is almost certain to be of dubious quality.
5) It adds weight and thickness in a device where every cubic millimeter matters.
To be clear there are good reasons and advantages to removable batteries but the calculus about them in the case of smartphones is pretty straightforward. It's a rarely used feature that few customers care much about that adds cost and complexity. The only surprising thing is that they weren't eliminated sooner by handset makers.
So it's dangerous, yet not easily replaceable. What does that say?
It says that you need to have good control over the production quality of the batteries used in the devices. Being able to replace the battery easily would not clearly solve the problem here. Even perfectly good Li-Ion batteries can be incinerated if the control electronics aren't designed properly or malfunction or if the battery is damaged somehow. Odds are that anyone with one of these phones that caught fire wasn't watching it slowly malfunction in such a manner that removing a battery would have been a viable solution.
Manufacturers care more about profit than customers getting injured in a fire.
Not if they wish to remain in business for any length of time. Companies care a lot about customers getting injured by their products when billions are on the line. Nobody is claiming that their motives are purely altruistic but I have no doubt that Samsung actually cares quite a lot about their product combusting in the hands of customers. Having a trusted product is very much in their interest both short and long term.
Lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries are considerably more stable than lithium polymer and are not prone to thermal runaway.
They have somewhat lower energy density than lithium polymer, which is probably why they're not very common for phones, tablets, and laptops. They were used in the OLPC.
They are also somewhat common in RC cars and planes, in part due to their voltage (3.2V, so four series cells make 12.8V), and in part due to their higher possible discharge current.
tens of thousands, but since it's AN AMERICAN BRAND we don't make a big deal of it, but when A FOREIGN BRAND COMPETING IN OUR MARKET has less than 100 batteries, then we blow the whole thing out of proportions and demand a full recall of 2.5 million devices.
This is the dihonesty of American market protectionism. The rest of the world needs to step up their game and play hard-ball with the U.S. whenever their products release a little fart in the air, instead of letting shit like this go on.
They are also somewhat common in RC cars and planes, in part due to their voltage (3.2V, so four series cells make 12.8V), and in part due to their higher possible discharge current.
The voltage difference from normal lipos is irrelevant, and there's high-discharge lipos now. The benefit of lifepo4 is a massive reduction in fire risk. It's not high discharge as much as high charge without fire since we already have high-rate lipos.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually, that's exactly how it works.
No it is not. I'm a certified accountant so I ought to know. I do this for a living. Samsung does not and never has been able to arbitrarily raise prices to compensate for product disasters. They are limited in what they can charge by what other can charge. This is a cold stone fact not up for dispute.
Samsung's profits are, in part, a hedge on cost of risk; or they have insurance against shit like this, which they cover a deductible for (from cash holdings built by profits), and the insurer essentially manages that cost.
A company the size of Samsung is most likely self insured for issues like this. The fact that they have built up a pile of profits to absorb losses like this has NOTHING to do with the fact that they will not be able to arbitrarily raise prices on future products to make up for the loss. It also does not mean that they cleverly raised prices in the past to pay for the screwup in advance. The prices went as high as market conditions would allow. Nothing more nothing less. Instead of the money going to shareholders it is now going to refund customers who bought a faulty product and for various other expenses.
Prices don't go up after the fact because they were already raised in anticipation of this shit happening now and then.
Prices were where they were because that is as high as their position in the market would allow. Nothing more complicated than that. Profits aren't some clever hedge on potential disasters. It's just a pile of money that is left over after you've paid all your expenses. The company keeps some of it in case of problems or investment opportunities. They don't get to arbitrarily raise prices to customers before or after the disaster just to hedge against disaster in a competitive market. The discussion was about whether they can pass on the cost of the disaster and the answer to that is mostly no. Samsung will have lower cash reserves than they would have had the problem not occurred and they will not be likely to recoup this money.
My Galaxy S5 is the last Samsung Galaxy with a removable battery. A spare battery that lets me keep a second one charged requires little space change on the phone and allows longer use without portable external battery packs. I've got a charger on the wall at home and a second battery charged when I'm going to go out on the road and need a long amount of phone battery use. Swap the battery when I get down to under 20 percent. Cost of the pair of items was around $16.00.
The phone maker can sell the optional add-ons and batteries can be replaced when they go bad without a professional phone repair outfit having special case cracking tools 8-)
I've had phones that had batteries go bad and swell and get hot. Swap battery and phone is good for a couple of more years.
Why no removable batteries -- they want to limit the lifespan of the phone...
The only thing I don't have on the S5 that's on newer phones was wireless charging which could have been built in.
We do the same at home. After all 4 phone batteries overheated, we bought 5 more and a charger, and now one is always ready to go.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...