I don't know how fatal this will be for Samsung next time they go out and sell phones; but people have got a taste of buying from a company that doesn't have any sales or customer rep centers easily accessible where people can go and complaint. I really hope it doesn't turn out to be fatal for them but I also hope it breaks the Samsung monopoly over Android and let brands like LG, HTC shine.
LG has a top competitor out right now in the V20. Removable battery, MIL-spec drop proof, second wide angle rear camera, concert-capable stereo mics with manual controls, a second screen that's actually useful (it's located in what would otherwise be dead bezel next to the front camera, and shows e.g. notifications while fullscreen, or can be used as a taskbar), usable software (read: close to vanilla Android Nougat now), fancy DAC and bundled with $150 B&O in-ears. With an aluminum main body and svelte looks.
And for some reason they won't launch it in Europe and steal Samsung's sales. Madness, it's by far the most compelling phone available right now.
Wow, the V20 looks amazing. I'll probably sell my iPhone 6+ and my Nexus 6P and get one. Not sure when I can get it in America, unfortunately. Any way to import it from Korea?
Sadly the only hardware feature I consider critical is available only in the Note:the stylus (I like painting).
Just an example how the value of a hardware feature does not depend on the quality of the feature but also on the utility for the user.
Yep, absolutely. For example I personally go to a lot of live music concerts, so the V20's microphones are really the selling feature for me (and they have nice synergy with the wide angle camera for stage recordings) - I've had the phone for two weeks now and had occasion to try them out at a rock concert and a jazz lounge so far, and they work as advertised and record a clean feed where my Nexus 5 just amounts to garbled noise and clipping that isn't intelligible as music. It's a hw feature I can't seem to get anywhere else (to my knowledge). I can easily see the stylus be the same thing for someone else.
I started with an LG optimus on Virgin mobile, and loved that phone. I had an LG G3 and the girlfriend has one as well. I'm mixed about them.
On the one hand, the hard ware is great. I got them cheap refurbished and they have a good community. On the other it gets hot, like burning hot touch. I've been through three batteries since getting it. The boot loop on mine made me switch phones. The thing that is making me pause with them is the software. I'm not fond of the custimaztions, but I can live with them. What got me is getting a marshmallow security update nuked the phone. WiFi stopped working, any earphones in the jack always started "Ok Google" recognigtion. Cell Signal went to 2G, and the Home/Back/OpenApps buttons stopped working. It turned the phone into a brick. I finally got around to rolling back this weekend, which took several hours. This wasn't just me I saw similar complaints on XDA.
This is partially down to the culture they come from. Koreans spend tons of time commuting on subways or sitting in coffeeshops, often watching video during both. The big screens are just a trade-of geared towards those use cases.
I really hope it doesn't turn out to be fatal for them but I also hope it breaks the Samsung monopoly over Android and let brands like LG, HTC shine.
OLED displays are so good they still sell themselves, and Samsung is the only handset maker that seems to be committed to the technology. I doubt this will change much.
They only consume more energy when displaying white. They consume very little energy when displaying black.
OLED displays have a very wide color gamut. If you have source material that was tuned to it, there's really nothing like it. To get a similar gamut with LCD you need a quantum dot backlight. Samsung devices all have a screen mode where they constrain their gamut to sRGB for more accurate colors, though.
In terms of color accuracy, they've consistently been the best around, when set to limit their gamut to sRGB. This (http://www.displaymate.com/Galaxy_Note7_ShootOut_1.htm) site has test results for most recentish smartphones and tablets and declared the Note 7's display to be "the best performing Smartphone Display that we have ever tested." Every Samsung device with an OLED display released in the last few years has achieved this.
And of course the contrast ratio is much better than LCD. In terms of display quality, provided the phone can be set to sRGB mode, OLED is as good or better than LCD in every metric. And this doesn't even touch on all of the novel uses a display that uses no power when displaying black can be put to - for example, Samsung devices can typically display the time or notifications in white-on-black on the display persistently when the screen is otherwise 'off'. With OLED, only the pixels that are active are drawing power.
The only problem with OLED has been blue pixel decay. I have an OLED display in both my tablet and my phone and I'm a heavy user, and I haven't noticed any change in the 2 years I've owned them though.
Really, it's just a better technology. It's shameful that everyone has allowed Samsung to maintain a lock on it. I really wish I didn't have to buy Samsung devices to get this fantastic technology.
One issue with Samsung AMOLEDs I've noticed is the PWM effect - you can see it in any review of a Samsung phone where the phone is not on max brightness. The PWM effect can cause headache for people who are susceptible to the flicker.
:-) It's ok - just cultivate an interest in all things emo/goth/death-metal and OLED is perfect.
Seriously though, from the above linked article,
While LCDs remain more power efficient for images with mostly full screen white content (like all text screens on a
white background, for example), OLEDs are more power efficient for typical mixed image content because they are
emissive displays so their power varies with the Average Picture Level (average Brightness) of the image content over
the entire screen. For OLEDs, Black pixels and sub-pixels don’t use any power so screens with Black backgrounds are
very power efficient for OLEDs. For LCDs the display power is fixed and independent of image content. Currently,
OLED displays are more power efficient than LCDs for Average Pictures Levels of 65 percent or less, and LCDs are
more power efficient for Average Picture Levels above 65 percent. Since both technologies are continuing to improve
their power efficiencies, the crossover will continue to change with time.
At peak brightness with a pure white screen, the iPhone 7's screen draws 1.08 watts, whereas the Galaxy Note 7's draws 1.8 watts. So if you keep your phone at peak brightness, I guess that's one metric where LCD beats OLED.
I'm fairly sure the new OLED displays from Samsung can produce extremely accurate colors. I don't remember exactly where I read so, perhaps AnandTech, but I believe the Samsung displays were considered some of the most accurate smartphone displays prior to the new iPhones.
I should note that for some reason it seems like most smartphone manufacturers, basically everyone aside from Apple, way oversaturate their displays, this is especially true in the case of Samsung. Even the Nexus 6P display looked horrendous to me out of the box. Fortunately there is a setting in the developer options to enable sRGB mode which makes a huge difference.
Regarding power consumption, I think OLED mostly loses out on efficiency when generating white backgrounds, but I'm not sure how much of a battery hit this causes in normal use scenarios.
As to what's so great about OLED, for me, as someone who frequently uses their phone in relatively low light situations, I absolutely love the deep blacks and the fact that when I have the phone on low brightness using a dark theme it barely produces any ambient light. On that note, Google seriously needs to introduce a system wide dark theme. I don't have an iPhone but I'm really interested to see if/when Apple adopts OLED whether they redesign iOS to take advantage of it. I know many people dislike the bright white UI of iOS and Android.
I absolutely love the deep blacks and the fact that when I have the phone on low brightness using a dark theme it barely produces any ambient light
Yup - completely agree. When I got my Tab S, I knew that the exynos 5420 was grossly inferior to the a8x in the Air 2, but I wanted my tablet for watching videos in bed at night.
I was right; the 5420 is execrable and makes web browsing very painful compared to the Air 2 (my kids have Air 2's). But the display is so much better than the Air 2's in every way you'd care to mention or measure. It's unbeatable for its intended purpose.
Bedtime browsing is indeed a huge advantage. I can finally browse HN in bed without pissing off the person trying to sleep next to me. Now Google just needs to get serious about system wide dark themes, as well as dark themes for stock apps, and I'll be happy.
I'm sure with the large screen on a tablet this is even more of a benefit.
Properly calibrated OLEDs look at least a lot better to my eye than any LCDs. Much deeper blacks and more pure colors that go past what an LCD can reproduce.
With the strong push for color _quality_ (please excuse my lack of a better term) on iOS devices lately, I find the OLED-equipped iPhone rumors a bit confounding.
Last I recall they looked a bit off. Nice, but a bit off. That said, my experience with OLED screens is a bit dated, so maybe the color reproduction has improved.
I was recently in the market for a phone, and considering an iPhone SE. But unfortunately I've got hooked on Lumia OLEDs, so I'm taking one last cheap hit from the rapidly cooling MS pipe while Apple gets that duck lined up ;-)
Have a cheap "Lumia OLED" myself. There was nothing unfortunate about thay buy. Great display, pretty good phone overall, and the money I saved went to a new tablet.
Also, I now have an excuse to not install the stupid apps friends and family and random guy at the bus stop recommend.
Anecdotally, my Moto X 2014 hasn't suffered anyburn-in, even on the taskbar or buttons, and I haven't heard other owners even commenting on it. Also, I haven't taken any measures to reduce it. I just love it for the near-zero brightness available through my Twilight/Flux app, no problems checking notifications in the dark!
From what I've read online the newer generation Samsung displays, those from say the last 1-2 years, have supposedly made big strides in dealing with "burn in". Apparently it's much less of an issue now, although still more common than LCD. Also, if I understand correctly, OLED doesn't actually suffer from "burn in" like LCD does, instead it's more "burn out" as the pixels, particularly the blue ones, degrade faster than other colors.
For what it's worth I have a Nexus 6P which uses a Samsung display and I haven't noticed any burn in yet, although I'm probably a very moderate user so that's not really saying much.
I had no idea the Lumia clock screen did that, it's a simple but brilliant solution to mitigate the problem. I'd love to see more work go into subtly shifting persistent UI elements around to avoid the issue. In particular I'd like to see the navigation keys and status bar on Android adopt something like that. I wonder if the UI elements would even need to shift locations or if it would be enough to shift colors so it isn't one particular color that degrades unevenly.
You just said that you had a device that got burn in and yet at the same time you are saying that it's not a problem. Waiting couple weeks to get burn in disappear does not sound like a "no problem" thing
Yes, burn in is not a problem. I've owned many OLED devices, and the only one to get any kind of burn in used older technology. It happened when I changed the settings so the screen would stay on when plugged in. It was barely visible. It went away quickly. All this FUD about burn-in seems like just a boogeyman created by a ill-informed people, expecially in 2016.
I think the parent comment was likely referring to Samsung's perceived dominance in the US market. I'm not sure of the US marketshare breakdowns, although it wouldn't surprise me if Samsung had more than 25%, but I think in terms of mindshare in the US it basically boils down to Apple or Samsung. This is probably particularly true for higher end phones.
> I also hope it breaks the Samsung monopoly over Android and let brands like LG, HTC shine
I have a Nexus S (Samsung), a Nexus 4 (LG), and a Nexus 5 (LG again). As you might guess, I bought those without really bothering to consider who the manufacturer was.
The 5, the most recent one, has failed catastrophically and eaten my data. The 4 is suffering from a swelling battery, and will be thrown away as soon as my OnePlus 3 arrives.
The S, two years older than the 4, is still going strong, although it doesn't seem quite up to the demands of modern android software.
To the extent that a "Samsung monopoly" exists, it's not at all clear to me that breaking it would improve anything.
Right, and consumer law means any problem with a phone you bought from them is something you need to take up with them rather than Samsung, is that right? You bought your phone from a retailer. Where the retailer got it from and who they complain to about issues is their problem not yours.
I think so. The buck always stops with the person you actually dealt with. The retailers can use the same protection when buying their stock in bulk I presume, so defective products get passed all the way back down the line.
They will sell the phone in BRICS and EU where consumers are more risk tolerant. Still plenty of profit. Also, I suspect US consumers will buy directly from Samsung anyway as Note 7 is still the best phablet out there.
>>also hope it breaks the Samsung monopoly over Android and let brands like LG, HTC shine.
LG phones have bootloop issues. And HTC phones are overpriced.
I love LG phones, but it's going to be hard to convince me to buy another one after the G4 bootloop stuff. On my third one a year in... (TMo keeps replacing them for me)
I assume the fault is entirely in the battery (?), so did Samsung change how the batteries were manufactured this year? Does the Note 7 have power demands that mean they can't go back to tried and tested battery manufacture?
(Hoping there are EE's or manufacturing people here that might have some educated guesses)
* Leaked iPhone 7 specs made Samsung shoot for the moon with Note 7 design
* Specs designed in boardroom called for Note 7 be lighter, shorter and narrower than iPhone 7+ but also have a larger screen, a significantly larger battery and a lot of internal room taken up by the stylus (and sure insert headphone jack punchline here).
* This is a hard problem, otherwise you'd think Apple would ship a 20% larger battery too.
* Design on all the massive revisions started late and launch was moved up so design timeframe was enormously compressed
* Engineers at Samsung don't have standing to tell execs something can't be done.
* And so mistakes were made somewhere between not having enough time to do it right and being asked to do the improbable.
> Specs designed in boardroom called for Note 7 be lighter, shorter and narrower than iPhone 7+ but also have a larger screen, a significantly larger battery and a lot of internal room taken up by the stylus (and sure insert headphone jack punchline here).
> * Specs designed in boardroom called for Note 7 be lighter, shorter and narrower than iPhone 7+ but also have a larger screen, a significantly larger battery ...
The Note series has always had a better display to size ratio and a larger battery. I don't see why this particular iteration should all the sudden have problems with that.
For reference:
Galaxy Note 5
153.2 x 76.1 x 7.6 mm (6.03 x 3.00 x 0.30 in)
Weight 171 g (6.03 oz)
Display 5.7 inches (~75.9% screen-to-body ratio)
Battery Non-removable Li-Po 3000 mAh battery
iphone 6s+
Dimensions 158.2 x 77.9 x 7.3 mm (6.23 x 3.07 x 0.29 in)
Weight 192 g (6.77 oz)
Display 5.5 inches (~67.7% screen-to-body ratio)
Battery Non-removable Li-Ion 2750 mAh battery (10.45 Wh)
> I don't see why this particular iteration should all the sudden have problems with that.
Well there's larger and there's a lot larger. This particular iteration increased the gap substantially.
3500 mAh (GN7) >> 3000 mAH (GN5) ~ 2950 mAH (i7+) > 2750 mAH (i6S+)
Below article offers speculation either way: that both the design itself and push for larger batteries was at fault and/or that it is simply a manufacturing error although they seem like two sides of the same coin -- at the end of the day you can't get around the fact that more batteries simply take up more internal space and the larger that 'more' is the harder the engineering problem is. Giving the engineers a hard design problem and then not giving them the corresponding necessary time to develop and test their designs is ultimately what's responsible for the defect.
South Korean experts suggested Samsung may have been so ambitious with the Note 7's design that it compromised safety.
"There was no choice but to make the separator (between positive and negative anodes) thin because of the battery capacity," said Lee Sang-yong, a professor at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology who worked more than a decade at LG Chem, a leading lithium battery maker. Thicker separators can improve safety but will not necessarily prevent all overheating issues, he said.
Doh Chil-Hoon, head of the state-run Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute's battery research division, said that based on the limited information provided by Samsung, he believes the push to increase battery power was part of the problem.
"Even with a small manufacturing mistake, if there had been enough elements to ensure safety, it would not explode," Doh said. "It is a roundabout way of admitting weak safety."
...
[Wayne Lam, an industry analyst at IHS Markit Technology] said he thinks the Note 7 battery problem resulted from weak controls in manufacturing, not a poor or unsafe design.
A spokeswoman at iFixit, which publishes repair guides for electronic gadgets, offered a similar view. "We don't think any internal design changes in the Note 7 are responsible for the exploding batteries—more likely just a manufacturing defect," IFixit's Kay-Kay Clapp said in an email.
Apple has tweaked hardware and software it developed itself to make iPhones use power more efficiently, while Samsung has increased the capacity of the batteries in its phones.
That can be done without increasing size by adjusting components or changing the production process, Lam said.
"You have two different trajectories, with Samsung packing in more energy density, versus Apple trying to trim it down by optimizing everything else," he said, adding that the two rivals are "constantly locked in this arms race of improving and one-upping."
Note though that those comments come before the replacements started exploding, something that implicates a deeper design flaw than just the battery production.
If you look at the ifixit tear down, the Samsung GN 7 battery also looks smaller than the iPhone 7 Plus battery. I can't imagine having a higher energy density is doing Samsung any favors.
Could this be why Apple pushes so hard on the SoC front? It's technically easier to increase performance and reduce power consumption of your SoC than it is to improve the battery capacity safely?
> GN 7 battery also looks smaller than the iPhone 7 Plus battery
Could be, it definitely looks smaller in two dimensions. But it also looks thicker -- the i7 teardown doesn't show the thickness as clearly but it doesn't appear to have anything like the 'pouch' you can see on the GN 7 battery.
I believe Samsung doesn't make the batteries. Whoever does, however, is probably not feeling too good...
It also means that this could've easily happened to another company's phones; remember the laptop fires a few years ago (Apple, Dell, IBM, Toshiba, etc. all issued recalls) that were determined to originate from defective Sony cells?
Samsung Electronics doesn't make the batteries - but Samsung SDI do, along with Chinese Amperex Technology (for the third sold in China). My understanding is that both devices with SSDI and with Amperex batteries have caught on fire (IIRC there have been failures inside and outside of China), so maybe a chassis design defect subjecting the batteries to unexpected strain?
Sure, I'm just saying blaming it on the battery manufacturer becomes a harder sell when two manufacturers are affected, unless Samsung Electronics proscribed the specs so tightly it's their design flaw, or they made the manufacturing equipment, or the batteries' operating environment (i.e. the phone) is a factor. Or SSDI and Amperex could have sold manufacturing tech to each other, I suppose.
Are the batteries made by just one contractor, and are they exploding at random? Or are there more than one contractor, and are the exploding batteries coming from one of them in particular? Is this known?
Considering how easy it would be to turn batteries into time-fused bombs (that pass QA) with the tiniest of impurities in the manufacturing process, I sometimes wonder if the note 7 problems could be the visible part of Samsung trying to stand up to a protection racket. I guess it would not take that big of a network of infiltrators or blackmail-handles on factory floor workers distributed over a range of suppliers to go all "nice phones you have there, would be a shame if they burnt..." on a phone brand.
The weak point of this theory is that the risk/cost of going public about this kind of threat would not be terribly high, unlike e.g. in plain old hostage taking.
Considering how easy it would be to turn batteries into time-fused bombs (that pass QA) with the tiniest of impurities in the manufacturing process, I sometimes wonder if the note 7 problems could be the visible part of Samsung trying to stand up to a protection racket. I guess it would not take that big of a network of infiltrators or blackmail-handles on factory floor workers distributed over a range of suppliers to go all "nice phones you have there, would be a shame if they burnt..." on a phone brand.
The weak point of this theory is that the risk/cost of going public about this kind of threat would not be terribly high, unlike e.g. in plain old hostage taking.
I read on an earlier discussion that the issue is caused by the positive/negative battery contacts pressing together and short-circuiting as a result of mechanical distress, so the fundamental issue would be due to how the battery is situated within the device.
I doubt Samsung will try to find another sales channel for them in North America. Going back to the feature-phone era, one of their most important advantages over their handset competitors has been their loyalty to the big phone companies. Doing an end-run around them to sell directly to their customers seems...unseemly.
So what happens to all of these Note 7's? Do they just get buried in a ditch somewhere? From reading Android Central and other sites, it seems like there are still a lot of Samsung faithful who are ready to risk having their heads blown off to own one.
Samsung said in a statement last month that the issue of overheating was caused by a "rare" manufacturing error that resulted in the battery's "anode-to-cathode [negative and positive electrodes]" coming into contact.
Looks like the fault is in the batteries, internal shorts are both uncommon and also extremely dangerous since they will essentially dissipate all the energy in the cell as heat and can't be stopped externally.
This is partially why I'm wary of devices with batteries which aren't easily removable... and to think a few years ago Samsung was making ads poking fun at Apple users for not having removable batteries.
This is partially why I'm wary of devices with batteries which aren't easily removable...
This argument is made all the time, but I don't understand it. If the batteries were removable, a large number of owners would eventually replace them with low-quality Chinese lithium batteries whose brand names contain the word "Fire" somewhere.
The result will be, big surprise, more fires. The difference is that there won't be one central manufacturer who can be forced to take responsibility for them. Publicity, if any, will be too obscure for most users to notice.
There is no way on Earth you will end up with fewer battery fires if the batteries are replaceable. We just won't hear about them.
>This is partially why I'm wary of devices with batteries which aren't easily removable.
Why? It seems like the batteries burn out fast enough that it wouldn't be possible to safely remove one once it starts smoking. In any case doing so might save the phone - unlikely but it might - however now you have a completely naked ignited incendiary device lying on your carpet, rather than one enclosed in a protective case. That sounds to me like a worse situation to be in. And anyway now you've saved your phone at great personal risk, what are you going to do with it? Put another Note 7 battery in it and keep on using it? I'm curious what your reasoning is here.
But would that be a benefit in this situation? The new 'safe' phones supposedly had changes beyond just a new battery, so the phones would have had to go back anyway.
They are probably still frantically figuring out how to fix the problem and will eventually have a replacement replacement. Then they can refurbish the existing ones.
If I were a Note 7 user, I would not want a replacement, I would want a refund. Given that problem arised even with replaced Note 7, I would not take another chance with that model.
What phones are an alternative to the Note? I use my Note 3's stylus dozens of times a day. No other stylus comes close, as it uses Wacom technology as opposed to standard stylus' capacitance sensing. The Wacom technology needs the phone to support it.
Are there any good stylii for writing text (i.e. dragging across the screen) for generic capacitance screens? All stylii that I've seen are good for selecting things (i.e. pushing against the screen) but terrible for writing.
Screwing up once happens, even if it shouldn't. Doing it twice will seriously shatter peoples trust in these devices and make them think twice before purchasing a new Samsung phone again. Samsung is a behemoth but this can really hurt their smartphone division.
After 2 years my S2 became a slow unfunctional piece of dead tech. I tried resetting it through the Samsung tools, which didn't help, so I rooted it and tried different versions of basic android on it, which didn't help. At the same time I had two friends who were experiencing the same kinds of problems, who let me toy with their phones.
It's completely anecdotal but three similar model phones breaking in exactly the same manner at exactly the same period in their lives was enough to put me off Samsung for good.
It's been some years since and I've seen Samsung in one scandal after another. Like the time they had an entire range of flatscreen tvs break because they put the transistors too close to the cooling plates, fixing it by moving the transistors but replacing the $0.5 piece with a Samsung produced transistor which they've never sold, making repairs nearly impossible.
To match an anecdote with an anecdote - I've been using S4 for 3 years, and then gave it to my brother (I've upgraded to S7 with contract renewal), who's been using it for the past year too. The phone is still going strong. Feels slow-ish today, true, but still better than some of the cheaper Android phones OOTB.
I blame Android's continued bloat creep[0] for that slowdown though. My brother had S3 before, and so does my SO, and they were all becoming less and less usable with time and each system update...
--
[0] - Is there an official term for the phenomenon that software bloats expands to cancel out any improvements in hardware?
My second S4 is still going strong -- the first one was replaced by Sprint in early 2015 after the screen died. Pretty good for a phone released in 2013.
But to be fair I don't do system updates so I don't experience the gradual slowdown that comes with increasing software bloat.
I am guessing that the culprit here is Samsung's shift to directly compete with iPhone 7. All other Note releases were standalone and received very little announcements.
May be it's just the external battery supplier's issue, we're yet to find out. I'm talking features/performance/Software/UI wise it's a great phone. Yes, the battery department totally let it down.
I have Note 7, my first non-nexus device going back to the G1, and its a brilliant piece of technology. The screen is flawless, its blazing fast, and the stylus is great for notes on OneNote. I am pretty bummed out Samsung couldn't get their manufacturers to deliver on 100% quality and control. I can't think of what other device to get. The Pixel XL looks fine, but it lacks wireless charging, a 5.7" screen, and a stylus.
For the record, Touchwiz is a bit too much, so I changed my launcher and made a few changes to the UI to align more with stock android. But other than that, I couldn't be happier with the ticking time bomb of a phone.
I was initially annoyed by the removal of wireless charging from the Nexus 5X (I previously had a Nexus 5).
However, to be honest, wireless charging was always 1. flakey (placement had to be just right - often I'd check in the morning and it hadn't charged) and 2. super slow.
I'd much rather trade it off for super-fast charging (Pixel is meant to do 7 hours of battery life in 15 minutes), and the reversible (and standardised!) USB-C cable.
I've always preferred smaller phones, so the 5" and 5.5" screens are fine for me (although I'm obviously going for the standard Pixel at 5") - and stylus to me doesn't make sense on a smaller phone screen anyhow - I have a tablet for that.
Agree with you that Touchwiz is too much - I've always hated it and found it gimmicky and tacky - and it tends to bog down the phone over time, like a bad Windows install.
As someone outside the US, I first associated "US carriers" with US Aircraft Carriers. I thought this was about the navy banning Note 7 aboard the carriers, before sales and replacement brought me back to thinking this is about mobile carriers. In India we just call them mobile networks :)
That was my initial association as well. I actually thought there was some sort of sea blockade to not let note 7s into the country. Then I thought that would be a bit too ridiculous and only then did my brain recognize the other meaning of carrier.
I immediately recognized the other meaning of the word, but I did let my imagination fly for a bit, picturing 2+ carrier groups blockading shipments of Note 7 phones...
I want to understand how this story makes sense, and I can't. If you put the facts together, they don't add up. First, here's the chronology.
1. Original Note 7 phones were blowing up, Samsung issued a recall.
2. Samsung released (suspiciously quickly) a new phone that used new batteries made by Amperex, which also provides batteries for the iPhone line. [A]
3. A report comes in of a post-recall, "safe" phone blowing up while not being connected to a charger and being turned off to be put in the owner's pocket. [B]
4. Another report of a "safe" phone blowing up while in the back pocket of its owner. [C]
5. Two more reports come in, both of a Note 7 blowing up overnight while their owners were asleep. [D,E]
Second, here's what I don't understand:
* We know the batteries are likely safe since they come from a reputed manufacturer also providing iPhones their batteries. Heck, even the initial battery manufacturer was Samsung itself, and Li-Ion batteries aren't exactly a new and unstudied technology.
* Even after the new batteries were put in use, the phones are still exploding even when not connected to a charger, as explicitly stated by reports [D] and [C], and as is likely the case for [B] and [E].
How are these phones blowing up when, in all likelihood, the batteries are safe and have been replaced, and the phone isn't even under heavy use at the time of the explosion? Maybe you could blame CPU heating or a faulty charging mechanism, but the phones were not charging or under heavy load. All they were doing was discharging at an idle rate. This is literally the state least likely to cause this kind of explosion.
I see the point you're trying to make; the authorities apparently accept a risk in terms of expensive equipment produced by corporations with strong lobbying funds, but decline that risk in terms of bottled liquids.
One fact that is overlooked is that there is actually a limit on the lithium-equivalent permitted per passenger just like there is a liquid-volume limit.
Last time I checked, the total maximum carry-on lithium-equivalent was 25 grammes which was about four smartphone batteries or two-dozen AA cells. Now as to whether that's an acceptable risk is for someone else more knowlegeable to evaluate.
Strange, I've been traveling with a 500cc refillable water bottle forever, never had any trouble (Germany, Netherlands, East Asia). Maybe it helps that my bottle is designed to be refilled, and not just an empty bottle from the supermarket.
Yes ... but sometimes only hot water is available, and at all times the quality of water not marked 'drinking water' could in principle be suspect (it might come via a tank somewhere — this is certainly common in old UK domestic plumbing — and the tank might have dead rat in it, etc.).
The problem is that with a water bottle, you can immediately see it's some kind of liquid on the x-ray and disallow it during inspection, whereas the Note 7 isn't immediately apparent when inspected from afar. While I don't agree with the liquid ban, it's much easier to ban a liquid than it is to ban a specific model of a phone.
Last time I was on an airplane the crew disallowed all Note 7s being turned on or being charged. I'm not sure if it was seriously enforced, but it was announced.
This adds to Samsung's long covered up history of phones that kill SDcards, bloated batteries, uncompliant USB spec connections, under-specced voltage regulators throughout, cheap USB chargers suspected as built to fail, screen colour imperfections and second hand parts discovered in new phones discovered during new phone tear downs. They regularly spend so much more money on advertising on bus stops and trains than they ever have on r&d for any product. The parts they sell to other vendors for rebranding etc... are almost always custom, higher grade built to order parts, for example their nvme pcie drives sold to Apple are built to much higher standards and they run completely custom Apple firmware, and guess what? They don't fail or fire.
Samsung are a straight out dodgy company - they're the Microsoft of hardware but with better advertising, unfortunately targeted towards people of slightly lower social status often.
So far there isn't any hard evidence (e.g HD videos) that the replacement phones really have the issue. All claims are based on hearsay and "reports".
But if true then Samsung really needs changes to its management and product line. It makes too many phones - right now there they have A, C, J, E lines besides the Galaxy line, confusing and aggravating customers and likely employees as well.
It can also mean that manufacturers are hitting a safety wall with lithium batteries, which is bad news for future phone battery capacities.
At least 2 of these have happened while people have been sleeping (One guy in KY had to be hospitalized to to inhalation of the smoke) and even if it happened during the day most people have 1 camera/video camera with them and it's their phone. Most people don't carry around a second camera to be used only to film their supposedly safe replacement bursting into flames. It sounds like the only way you'd believe this to be true is if you saw video of a phone from production, to signing off by the president of Samsung that it was safe, to shipping, to full use of the phone until such a time that it burst into flames. People with phones that have caught fire have provided proof that the serial numbers of their phones were supposed to be replacements and thus safe.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And video evidence these days when billions have a smartphone shouldn't be much to ask for.
>>At least 2 of these have happened while people have been sleeping (One guy in KY had to be hospitalized to to inhalation of the smoke) and even if it happened during the day most people have 1 camera/video camera with them and it's their phone.
And how do you know these people weren't violating manufacturer safety guidelines? Or that the reports are true and not rumors? Or that it is not an isolated accident?
>>Most people don't carry around a second camera to be used only to film their supposedly safe replacement bursting into flames.
These days if something extraordinary happens - such as a phone blowing up in the middle of the day - it is usually filmed. When it is not, then that raises questions.
>> It sounds like the only way you'd believe this to be true is if you saw video of a phone from production, to signing off by the president of Samsung that it was safe, to shipping, to full use of the phone until such a time that it burst into flames.
Chinese suppliers on Aliexpress today require unpacking videos before claiming defective merchandise. So it isn't much to ask for some evidence before a witch-hunt.
"These days if something extraordinary happens - such as a phone blowing up in the middle of the day - it is usually filmed."
Are you sure there's no selection bias going on here? In today's media/internet climate, I think your vastly more likely to hear about extraordinary events that have been filmed than those that haven't.
