Samsung Reveals Extent of Note7 Battery Fire Investigation

[mdelvecchio]

People, corporations have found out the best way to get beyond a controversy is to own up to it, and own up Samsung did. While less extreme and definitely lessor in nature, the iPhone 4 antenna gate offers how most companies try to handle problems - they blame the consumer. Apple at first blamed us for holding it wrong, and they never really came clean on the cause.

Wow, you're a staff member yet so very wrong on this. Sounds like you haven't even watched the iphone4 media event where they went over it in great detail. Two things were learned: 1) any internal antenna phone of will suffer signal attenuation when wrapped in a water bag (hand) tightly enough, which they showed with other phones of the day. 2) Carrier data proved that despite this, the dropped calls were about the same as the 3, because in real life no one death grips their phone.

There was no antenna problem, which is why apple continued to sell the 4, unchanged, for years to come. Newer models made death gripping even harder to do, but the 4 continued to be a big seller.
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Apple is normally good about safety recalls. They step up when the thing it will explode or catch fire.

Apple is history bad at product uniformity issues.

Not really. They sell more devices than anyone in absurdly huge numbers, so there will be some defects as with any company. You just hear about it more.
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Holy moly... that's a lot of phones on test! Have to admire Samsung for being so open and so thorough about this.

Hard to not be open when your phone is announced on ever flight as being a life threatening danger to everyone's safety. They have absolutely no choice.

 

[I7guy]

I reckon all these conspiracy theories are made up! Ahem. Joking aside....the S8 will not only have to improve drastically over the S7 which itself is a fantastic phone in order to dissociate themselves with past recent design flaws and to show they are doing more innovationwise than Apple which admittedly shouldn't be too difficult. Nevertheless with 2 months to go there's a lot hinging on it being revolutionary to fully distance itself from the iPhone with its 10 year old look. Will the public not take Note (sic) regardless or take a leap of faith and 'think different' and realise there is actually better kit out there for less money. Or will they be too fixated on impressing their gullible chums with another minor 'jet white' or 'rose-tinted gold' facelift - the novelty of which will soon have them asking whether it really was worth forking out a months wages for 'that' logo again.

Out of curiosity where is the final word in what constitutes "better" for a particular individual?

 

[iosuser]

I would love to see that 200k ports USB charger how it compares to my 5-port Anker charger That is quite the test bench, pretty impressive how neat and organize it was.

 

[Foggydog]

Hmmmmm,
I could be wrong, but if you look closely at the test facility, it looks like mostly tablets getting charged. In the far right of picture, it looks like phones. Thoughts?

 

[manu chao]

People, corporations have found out the best way to get beyond a controversy is to own up to it, and own up Samsung did. While less extreme and definitely lessor in nature, the iPhone 4 antenna gate offers how most companies try to handle problems - they blame the consumer. Apple at first blamed us for holding it wrong, and they never really came clean on the cause.

Apple did not blame people for holding it wrong, Steve Jobs did so, in a personal email, not a press release. Apple as a company did pretty much what you suggest: try to be open (antenna gate event) and provide a remedy (bumper).

 

[Thunderhawks]

Correct we have no idea how Apple will respond in the future to some unknown issue, but we do have a fairly lengthy history to draw on, including long denials of problems, such at the dGPU problems and only then a class action suit forced them to action. More recently we have the display coating flaking off the MBPs and it took a lot (I forget it there was a class action suit) for apple to stop denying, or marginalizing the issue and institute a repair program.

I'm not dumping on apple, just highlighting their past behavior. That's really not even my point which I think is getting lost in the Apple Vs. Samsung chatter. People seem to get their ire raised when people praise a competitor and/or criticize apple.

My point is, that when a company owns up to a problem they tend to fare better at moving beyond the controversy. Its too soon to say that Samsung has recovered, there's a lot of mistrust and bad will when it comes to phones catching on fire. This is a step in the direct direction however.

Let me finish and restate that I don't own, nor did I ever own a Galaxy phone, and I'm on an iPhone right now, but being an iPhone owner doesn't mean I should take a blind eye to Apple's missteps

Same here, never had a SAMSUNG phone and just like you I have seen (and actually experienced) a lot of Apple denials. Many times annoyingly after warranties are expired. (I tend to use my stuff until it is literally dead)

My point is that when something is obvious there is no way to deny it. To praise somebody for that is unnecessary.

This was a SAMSUNG issue, so why even bring Apple into it, insinuating they would not have done the same?

We can set our clocks to expect the next Apple issue. It's the nature of product development and production issues.

Might as well include car manufacturers, who only recall things many times due to government intervention.

 

[Jim Lahey]

Good stuff. Although I certainly don't necessarily believe that Samsung should be rewarded with "open and transparent" plaudits. In my mind this is a press release whose main purpose could be viewed as very necessary in order to give consumers confidence that the next phone isn't also going to go up in flames.

 

[chr1s60]

Wow, you're a staff member yet so very wrong on this. Sounds like you haven't even watched the iphone4 media event where they went over it in great detail. Two things were learned: 1) any internal antenna phone of will suffer signal attenuation when wrapped in a water bag (hand) tightly enough, which they showed with other phones of the day. 2) Carrier data proved that despite this, the dropped calls were about the same as the 3, because in real life no one death grips their phone.

There was an issue with the phone. Apple chose to issue a free case instead of recalling phones. The issue could be replicated by many using a method as simple as placing their finger in a specific spot on the phone. No death grip required. If Apple truly felt there was no issue they wouldn't have given free cases. They did a cost analysis. Number of complaints and possible percentage of phones impacted by the issue and the cost to do the extra R&D, issue a recall, and replace phones vs. the cost of issuing a free case to everyone which would go around the problem instead of fixing it. The case was cheaper. Years later people are still making excuses for Apple and really need to stop. They messed up. The ridiculous iPhone 6+ bending was an example of a non issue. Apple addressed it and because of the fact that it was a ridiculous claim and unlikely to happen in normal use, they did nothing to address it in terms of recall.

People need to stop acting like Samsung instantly did the right thing. They didn't. They brushed the issue off at first until it continued happening and the media caught hold of it. They essentially had their hand forced on the issue. Same as Apple was when it came to Antennagate. Difference being, it wasn't a safety issue with the iPhone 4 and Apple found a solution to the problem that made it a cheaper fix than a recall. That doesn't change the fact that both phones had issues and neither manufacturer truly wanted to address them at first.

 

[rohanparekh]

Compare Apple's likely response: "You're charging it wrong"

It is 2017. And you are still stuck with 2010 cassette. God bless you

 

[bsolar]

It is 2017. And you are still stuck with 2010 cassette. God bless you

Some tunes are evergreen and still up-to-date despite being old.

 

[kdarling]

Wow, you're a staff member yet so very wrong on this. Sounds like you haven't even watched the iphone4 media event where they went over it in great detail. Two things were learned: 1) any internal antenna phone of will suffer signal attenuation when wrapped in a water bag (hand) tightly enough, which they showed with other phones of the day.

Talking about death grips was meaningless handwaving to distract people from the fact that simply touching one tiny junction -->|<--- of the iPhone 4 external antenna was enough to drop some calls.

2) Carrier data proved that despite this, the dropped calls were about the same as the 3, because in real life no one death grips their phone.

They didn't say that at all. You just think they did, because they worded it cleverly. In fact, the number they gave meant that dropped calls could've almost DOUBLED. But Apple relied on reporters to not follow up and investigate.

Apple did not blame people for holding it wrong, Steve Jobs did so, in a personal email, not a press release. Apple as a company did pretty much what you suggest: try to be open (antenna gate event) and provide a remedy (bumper).

On the contrary, the Antennagate press conference was full of comments designed to distract people from the issue.

As Anandtech found out, just putting it in your hand caused a 20dB drop in signal. The previous model, the 3GS, only dropped 2dB in the same situation.

That means the iPhone 4 had over 50 times the signal drop of the 3GS when held the same way.

As Anandtech put it:

"The main downside to the iPhone 4 is the obvious lapse in Apple's engineering judgment. The fact that Apple didn't have the foresight to coat the stainless steel antenna band with even a fraction of an ounce worth of non-conductive material either tells us that Apple doesn't care or that it simply doesn't test thoroughly enough."

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/16

The point is, no, Apple was not forthright in that case. They bent over backwards to phrase things in such a way as to distract and mislead. This is something they excel at.

 

[TechGeek76]

I'm sure this made sense in your head. Something got lost between your head and the interwebs. What exactly are you trying to say?

This part is particularly ironic from him :

It shows how biased people are against Apple.

 

[thespacekid]

Hats off to Samsung for releasing this info. While helping their competitors, it should improve battery safety overall.

 

[citysnaps]

I blame consumers. No seriously. We want it cheap and fast... result = companies will make them cheap and fast... result = poor quality control.

You blame consumers? Astonishing. And sad.

 

[I7guy]

Talking about death grips was meaningless handwaving to distract people from the fact that simply touching one tiny junction -->|<--- of the iPhone 4 external antenna was enough to drop some calls.



They didn't say that at all. You just think they did, because they worded it cleverly. In fact, the number they gave meant that dropped calls could've almost DOUBLED. But Apple relied on reporters to not follow up and investigate.



On the contrary, the Antennagate press conference was full of comments designed to distract people from the issue.

As Anandtech found out, just putting it in your hand caused a 20dB drop in signal. The previous model, the 3GS, only dropped 2dB in the same situation.

That means the iPhone 4 had 100 (one hundred) times the signal drop of the 3GS when held the same way.

As Anandtech put it:



The point is, no, Apple was not forthright in that case. They bent over backwards to phrase things in such a way as to distract and mislead. This is something they excel at.

It's a worthwhile exercise to compare a minor antenna issue explained by jobs, who had a large following, to an unusual battery safety issue.

 

[Plutonius]

Who actually trust Samsung .

 

[ferrous]

Corporate greed at its finest. Samsung learns its lesson, I hope.

 

[fyun89]

What I'm curious is that... why Note 7? I'm sure Samsung used the same battery model for all of its other phone models. Note 7 is bigger version of S7. Why hasnt it happened on S7??

Its strange as Samsung is very specialized in battery manufacturing..

Hopefully it wont happen again, but it's a good thing that a corporation admits its mistake.

 

[danckwerts]

A design defect in the original batteries, a manufacturing defect in some of the replacement batteries and missing insulating tape in some phones. They certainly have plenty to learn.

 

[satcomer]

Who actually trust Samsung .

Why do people buy anything from that company: Samsung recalls Top Loading Washing Machines 2016

 

[dk001]

"...

I think this article says it all. Samsung rushed the Note 7 and it's quality control suffered. Some of the devices for missing insulation tape is a tell tale sign this should have never happened and is unacceptable.

The biggest take away these other phone manufacturers can learn from Samsung's mistake, is to Put out a quality device, even if it means it's not going beat the other phone competitor first.

Don't buy it. You can rush and the issue with the first round of batteries makes sense. Missing testing or not all engineering properly vetted.
Poor weld, missing tape, etc... shows a lack of quality control at the battery manufacturer.

So we have a rushed product followed by a poor quality control during manufacturing process. Two separate issues.

 

[pika2000]

People need to remember that prior to the pressure from US government and other institutions, Samsung wasn't even planning to do an official recall. And Samsung only offer refunds in countries where there are already consumer protection laws forcing them to. In countries like Singapore, Samsung only gave like a window of a few weeks for people to exchange their phones, and there were no refunds allowed. Only exchange for the same model. Oh, and Samsung gave you some vouchers to be spent on Samsung store as "consolation." It was pathetic considering the Note 7 is a flagship phone with premium customers. In other regions, Samsung offered a low end J series phone as a loaner. A total insult. Heck, the only one apologizing from Samsung was the Samsung US president. No apologies from the executives on the Korean side.

It's not until the second recall when Samsung finally get serious about it.

So yeah, Samsung seems like a good boy now. But they did not behave that way until they had to.
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Why do people buy anything from that company: Samsung recalls Top Loading Washing Machines 2016

In some regions, it's the best you can get in terms of local availability and local warranties/support. And Samsung marketing is huge to the point that many people buy Samsung simply because it's the only brand they are aware of and sort of trust.

 

[jclardy]

proper subtitle for the picture above: 3.. 2.. 1..

New SpaceX propulsion testing lab

 

[kemal]

So two batteries from different sources fail due to different defects. Note that Samsung also mentioned, quietly, they would make more space around the battery.

Perhaps other devices do not compress Li pouch batteries enough to revel defects in battery manufacturing.

 

[Wowereit]

Meanwhile, we have numerous cheap Xiaomi phones that don't seem to have issues.

Well, "only" 1 in X thousand Notes started to burn.
I'm pretty confident that there are dozens of devices released by various manufacturers who have comparable quotas.
Differences are:
1. if my cheap chinese import starts smoking, I probably won't inform consumer reports or something.
2. lower volume = less affected devices = less media attention.
3. less important brand = less media attention.

Xiaomi is pretty big and popular, but what about the Dogees, Alcatels, Meizus, Umis, Xolos, Lavas, Leecos, Vivos and Blus?