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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.
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.
No, not totally true because no one is going to force you to buy a Samsung product, you have to see the value at the higher price for this to work.
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.
It's not about support, it's about security. Knox (only on Samsung) is the closest you can get to decent security on Android, and if you're using it for work purposes they likely care about such things.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
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/
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.
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).
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!
Puh-leeze! Don't you understand that if companies had to do that, it would slow innovation? American companies would less innovative! We cannot have an innovation gap!
Besides, no company would sell a dangerous product because it would affect their profitability! So why have this extra step? We can certainly trust companies to make sure that their products aren't dangerous because it's in their own interest!
So a few people get injured along the way. That's price you pay for innovation!
(And, yes, I'm being very facetious)
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.
The phone needs to have a replaceable battery for two reasons:
1. To be able to replace the battery if it turns out that the battery is defective and prone to catching fire. If Note 7 had a replaceable battery, Samsung could have told the buyers to just bring the battery to the recycling center etc instead of shipping the entire phone in a flame proof box.
2. To protect the battery from the other phone components.
I use older phones that have replaceable batteries. The battery has a case tat is quite sturdy (I cannot bend it or push it in easily) and also the phone has an internal case, which means that when the battery is in use, it is protected by two layers of plastic: phone circuit board - phone case - battery case - battery - battery case - battery cover - outside.
Removable batteries have to have protection circuitry built in the battery (AFAIK it is the law). Protection circuits that cut off power (sometimes permanently) in case of overcharge, overdischarge or overheat. Protection circuits that you can leave out when making the battery non-removable.
Here are the reasons I came up with why the batteries exploded:
1. Bad batteries - not very likely as the new (supposedly good) batteries still exploded.
2. Bad charger circuits leading to overcharge or overheat. The protection circuits should have prevented that.
3. Incorrectly set low voltage cut-out resulting in overdischarge. The protection circuits should have prevented that too.
4. Battery overheat due to being near some hot chip or other component. The protection circuits should have cut off power.
5. Battery case squished or pierced by some component in the phone. The double case of a removable battery should have prevented that. May have helped with insulating the battery from the hot component as well.
So your phone components really get only another sticker's worth of isolation.
Both the battery case and the phone case under the battery compartment is thicker than a sticker, at least in my phones.
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.