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Portables Hardware

NVIDIA Recalls Shield Tablets Over Heat Risk 27

An anonymous reader writes: NVIDIA has issued a recall for 88,000 units of its 8-inch Shield tablet sold in the past year. Predictably, it's because of the battery. There have been reports of overheating, including two reports that the tablet got so hot it damaged the floor it was resting on. Oddly, the company is requiring anyone returning the tablet to update its OS to the latest release.
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NVIDIA Recalls Shield Tablets Over Heat Risk

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  • by Rhywden ( 1940872 ) on Friday July 31, 2015 @12:00PM (#50223849)

    The required update isn't "odd" because it facilitates two things:

    First, it checks whether you're a owner of a affected device or not.

    Second, if this is indeed the case it then facilitates getting the RMA number in conjunction with the website.

    Basically, you go into "System" on your device, check the battery, it tells you that you're affected. You then open the website, enter the serial number of the device. You get an RMA number, and enter that into the device. You then get another number (some kind of receipt, probably) and enter that into the website, along with your contact information.

    Sounds more complicated than it is and you're done in about 4 minutes, depending on how fast you type.

    • by isfry ( 101853 )

      If you have the old firmware you will not see the battery type you have. It is not until you update your firmware that you will see that on the about screen.

  • From the title, I was wondering how NVIDIA recalls were shielding tablets over a heat risk. You would expect the opposite - a recall should, well, recall tablets, not shield them.

    • From the title, I was wondering how NVIDIA recalls were shielding tablets over a heat risk. You would expect the opposite - a recall should, well, recall tablets, not shield them.

      Never heard of heat shields? ;-)

      • by SeaFox ( 739806 )

        I was expecting some sort of Marvel tie-in myself.
        Hey, we have the ASUS Transformer devices.

  • Update required (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The update is actually required so that you can get your battery model number. Without the update, the "Battery" field that they tell you to check isn't present.

  • NVIDIA is usually really good about support. I wouldn't worry about this. I sent in my original NVIDIA Shield with a latch problem and they sent me a brand new one pretty fast.
    • by DudemanX ( 44606 )

      Yeah they're great with support. Unless you happen to have a bump gated 6000 series gpu in a laptop and they decide not to provide your OEM with the resources to fix it.

      • Or a bump gated 8800 series desktop card, I know several people with dead cards. I was following the issue pretty closely and I never heard of Nvidia setting with desktop card makers to provide them funds to replace people's dead desktop cards, I only saw them give money to companies that made laptops.
  • by Lord Crc ( 151920 ) on Friday July 31, 2015 @12:38PM (#50224179)

    I just sent it back to the vendor (under warranty) because the latest OS update caused the speakers to melt.

    While browsing the net I noticed the smell of burnt plastic, and quickly noticed the edges (where the speakers are) was too hot to touch. Turned the thing off but they were cooked.

    Then I found I wasn't alone... https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/834884/shield-tablet/speakers-damaged-after-3-0-update/ [geforce.com]

    Apparently somehow the speakers got fed DC current while doing nothing in particular. Impressive if you ask me.

    • Apparently somehow the speakers got fed DC current while doing nothing in particular. Impressive if you ask me.

      I would guess a software bug that wrote inappropriate values to the DAC (possiblly straight binary vs 2's complement confusion) combined with an idiot hardware designer DC coupling the audio path.

  • So assuming they find some kind of fix for this, that means 88,000 cheap refurbished tablets that they need to unload. Right? With my luck this'll wind up like the HP thing, but just in case: I should start looking 3-4 months from now?

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