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Re-Boxing My Exploding Galaxy Note 7 In Samsung's Fireproof Box

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"It is notable that other competing phones with lithium-ion batteries have been reported to suffer from spontaneous combustion, but I can't remember any other company recalling their phones. In my opinion, Samsung is doing the right thing while others haven't, and the company is suffering a massive backlash when we should applaud it for doing the right thing. Of course, that likely isn't a popular opinion. "

Well said.
 


Well, because the other companies didn't get the press, and they didnt get the consumer protection agency involved, we don't know the real extent. These reports go back years, but the Note does suffer from it more than others, apparently. Also, its hard to ascertain how many of these are real incidents, or just made up. There must be a real danger because Samsung itself initiated the recall, though.
 
InvalidError, the recall was issued long before that many incidents had happened.

There have been many reports of the iPhone 6 catching fire (and injuring people), just in the last 2 weeks, and not a peep from Apple.
 

Companies have no control over consumer protection. When a device is found responsible of multiple incidents, an investigation gets launched regardless of what the company does. Samsung simply leapfrogged the process, launching its own recall before consumer protection did to soften the PR blow and earn due diligence brownie points which will come in handy to mitigate liabilities from injury and property damage lawsuits.

You don't see other manufacturers hit by consumer protection recalls on such a large scale because most such events are spread out months or years after the product launch and the manufacturers are usually capable of isolating the material or manufacturing flaw to specific batches.

Here, it appears that Samsung failed to correctly identify the cause of the first recall since multiple replacement phones have spontaneously combusted over the weekend. That's going to ratchet the flaw's severity up a few notches.
 


I'm certainly not well-versed on the consumer protection agency, but several Apple's have also been reported to catch fire, and within the first few weeks. It will be interesting to see how the agency responds.

 

At the moment, there have been only two documented cases of iPhone 7 batteries going bad and the prevalent theory is that the phones got dropped in a way that may have compromised their battery. When you make stupidly thin and tightly stacked devices, it makes their internal components that much more vulnerable to external forces.
 
Still, if they had not gone to the non user replaceable battery, this would not have been as costly or complex an issue.

Form won over function and now there is hell to pay.
 
This is what happens when bloggers runs news. Page clicks equals revenue, scandals equal page clicks.
This phone uses the exact same battery as other major brands. From the same factories. It uses the exact same electronics, from the same factories.
My lessons learnt from this debacle is, I've unsubscribed from every single gadget blog on the internet. When I want to fill my daily quota of dumb news, I'll read about Trump on the regular news sites.
 


You bring up something I need to point out, Apple DOES NOT allow for their consumers to replace batteries themselves.

I understand the Note 7 batter is "built-in", and some putz at Samsung probably tried to save a couple bucks and went with a sub-par manufacturer.

What I have the largest issue with, is all these media stories of "Samsung phone starts fire", when the phone isn't a Note 7, but a phone who's batter could be REPLACED, and likely was, with some cheapest (lowest quality control) option from an online sale.
 
It might not be as simple as a defective battery. According to CPSC and Samsung press releases, some batteries experienced excessive pressure during their manufacture, potentially rupturing or partially rupturing some cells. Another CPSC release claims the batteries were slightly too large for the phone enclosure, which would cause the phone to exert too much pressure on the battery.

If the problem is the result of a manufacturing defect that has since been corrected, the replacement devices should not be failing. If it's the result of pressure, you'd have to suspect that either the phone or battery is deforming in some way when subjected to physical stress or heat expansion/contraction. That could just as easily make the phone housing at fault rather than the battery design.
 

That is assuming the issue was with the batteries themselves. If the fault is related to electronics, a new battery wouldn't solve anything. At the moment, the only thing we know for certain is that whatever the cause of the first recall wave may have been, there was more to the failures than whatever Samsung fixed before shipping replacement units.
 
Flew from UK to US and back last week and on my flights they gave instructions that Galaxy Note 7's must not be used or charged during the flight on advice from one of the air authorities. This is definitely being taken very seriously.
 
"It is notable that other competing phones with lithium-ion batteries have been reported to suffer from spontaneous combustion, but I can't remember any other company recalling their phones. In my opinion, Samsung is doing the right thing while others haven't, and the company is suffering a massive backlash when we should applaud it for doing the right thing. Of course, that likely isn't a popular opinion."

"Well, because the other companies didn't get the press, and they didnt get the consumer protection agency involved, we don't know the real extent. These reports go back years, but the Note does suffer from it more than others, apparently. Also, its hard to ascertain how many of these are real incidents, or just made up. There must be a real danger because Samsung itself initiated the recall, though."

Links? I've rarely seen an incident this widespread without a recall being issued. Sony had some issues with their laptops/etc and issued a recall. This sounds a lot like "well other companies have had it happen too and they aren't saintly like Samsung and don't issue recalls" rhetoric. Look, I generally find Samsung hardware to be superior to the cheap crap put out by Huawei et al. But as you point out yourself, Samsung is all over this.

They're not ruining their own launch for kicks. There's a major issue, and although I do applaud them for responding quickly the bottom line is that they *BLEEPED* up big time. Thus in this particular instance, the most apt phrase is one you used yourself - A hopeless fanboy. Very Apple-fan-like behavior. There are competing models you know.
 
If fine this unlikely that it's just a charging issue.
Phones and their batteries have thermistors in them that are surely used to monitor battery temperature during charging.

The batteries themselves are probably the issue and are rupturing internally, even not during the charge process.
 
I think samsung is jumping on top of this to try and get out in front of it as much as possible. While other phones have issues, we're seeing not only people injured but entire vehicles burned to the ground. Planes have had to be evacuated due to burning/exploding phones.

Maybe they accidentally shipped out the special edition meant for mission impossible with the self destruct feature.

The note products aren't the only ones, samsung is having major problems recently with washing machines exploding and flying apart as well. So much so that major hardware stores have yanked them off the shelves. Samsung has made washing machines and phones/tablets for quite awhile now without major outbreaks of disaster like they're currently seeing which I can only guess is they went cheap somewhere along the line and it bit them.

If the batteries they're using are the culprit it could very well cause concern in other markets where samsung's 18650 batteries are pretty popular. I've got other devices that use their 25r's and I'm just keeping my fingers crossed it's limited to their mobile batteries. Next time I go to buy batteries I'm thinking I'll have a look at lg's offerings.

I'm not sure if it's related in some way, but hasn't samsung recently been in the middle of laying off a good portion of its staff and reducing their expenses by close to half around 2015/2016? Given that components available now were likely manufactured in the past year or so it and it's recently that we've been seeing this sort of product failure fallout.
 
The thing with this issue is, that every phone has their issues, such as the Apple IOS update a while back that bricked people's phones, people just wiped it off. It just seems all of the Non-Samsung fanboys are just hating on them as the Samsung vs Apple war carries on, each phones have their positives and negatives, and everyone has their own opinion. People like the iPhone series due to the well optimized processors, and people like the Samsung series for the cameras. There's many things that Apple and Samsung are on par with, and many things they aren't.

As said above, there have been Apple phones catching fire, such as that one person who received it DOA after it had caught fire or exploded in the delivery process. Nowadays, the battle between the phone companies are putting some insane pressure on them, and they release phones without complete testing for any issues such as this, just for them to release a phone.

I am not exactly a fan of any phone company, I prefer Samsung as I like the speed of the processes, the functionality and the design, I admit that Apple phones are probably, in some case quicker and look really nice, but to be honest, it's just a phone.

And also with the designs needing more optimization and speed increases to keep the customers coming, there will be a heat increase as well, a larger battery, just to keep the phone going and being under great recommendation by the fan base of that phone. All phone companies have their issues, and it just seems that Apple seem to go under the radar when they have issues.

But you must admit, Samsung is taking it in the right step, showing that they care about the customers of their phones and admitting their mistakes and resolving them as soon as possible to get their phones tested, optimized and known as safe to use for their customers.

The 'Exploding Phone' issue isn't 'Just' Samsung, its every phone company, there probably isn't a company that sells phones in the current age that hasn't had some sort of overheating phone, may it be the battery, processor, LCD, or any other component of the phone. Every company has their issues, and the amount of pressure from the customers and the press, they might rush things a little.

And it wont be just phones, it'll be Laptops, Desktops, Tablets etc.
 
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