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Hardware

Confirmed: In an Unprecedented Move, Samsung Recalls All Galaxy Note 7 (yna.co.kr) 179

Posted by msmash from the unprecedented-moves dept.
After delaying shipment of its flagship smartphone Galaxy Note 7 over quality control testing earlier this week, Samsung is all set to recall all of the Note 7 it has shipped in its home nation and abroad, according to rather reliable Yonhap News Agency, which is citing a Samsung official. It would be an unprecedented move from the company. From the report: The Samsung official told Yonhap News Agency that the cause of the reported explosions has been traced to the battery of the new phablet. "The most important thing is the safety of our customers and we don't want to disappoint our loyal customers," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. He said Samsung is expected to announce the result of its investigation into the cause of the reported explosions, as well as comprehensive countermeasures either this weekend or early next week at the latest. "Products installed with the problematic battery account for less than 0.1 percent of the entire volume sold. The problem can be simply resolved by changing the battery, but we'll come up with convincing measures for our consumers," said the official.Samsung confirmed on Friday that it is indeed recalling the Note 7.
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Confirmed: In an Unprecedented Move, Samsung Recalls All Galaxy Note 7 More

Confirmed: In an Unprecedented Move, Samsung Recalls All Galaxy Note 7

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  • battery? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 01, 2016 @12:33PM (#52809099)

    just think how easy it would have been if the phone had a user replaceable battery?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That's assuming it's the battery and not battery control hardware or software.

    • knowing a lot of people they would buy the cheapest on fleabay or amazon and you would get double the explosions

    • And how much clunkier the device would be.
      Right now the trend is to make the devices as thin as possible.
      We will get modular devices again in the future when we get to a point where devices get too thin to be comfortable/useful so they will have thicker cases with empty space that engineers could use to put in places for ports and replaceable consumables.

      Also people are wanting lower priced electronics.
      Rarely will someone pay over $1,000 for electronics. Where back in the 1990's 2k for a PC was a good pric

      • Re:battery? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday September 02, 2016 @05:32AM (#52813855)

        And who wants them to be as thin as possible? I'm honestly asking, please, if there is ANYONE here who actually consider this a feature they're looking for in a phone, I would be genuinely interested in the reason! I do not know a single person who ever said that they'd really want their phone to be thinner.

        • Yes, I do thanks. To a point, but we're note there yet. They'll probably need to remove the camera at some point too.

          • Ok, what is the use case? I can't really think of a good reason why the cellphone should be as thin as possible.

            • Because that is what is popular now.

              Lets look at PC's
              The 1980's the goal were to make smaller Desktops You see things like the Commodore 64 the Apple ][... All really trying to be as small as they can make it and still be functional.
              Then during the 1990's the trend went toward big towers with ports and slots for massive expansions... That nearly no one actually filled up.
              The 2000's The mini-Tower was popular. However it still had a bunch of empty space. Where it was trendy to have a PC Window with Neon Lig

              • Re:battery? (Score:4, Funny)

                by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday September 02, 2016 @07:57AM (#52814279)

                But doesn't that display a wrong image of cell phones? Not all cell phones are slim, but they are all equally valid. By portraying slim cell phones as popular and preferable we subject fatter, sorry, plus-sized phones into a shame spiral that may lead to them trying to get rid of their battery pack or worse, solder it in, in a false sense of this being what we want from them.

                Cell phones, please listen! I love you just the way you are, it's not how slim you are, it's how easy your battery can be changed! That's what men really want!

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by swb ( 14022 )

                I'd guess the narrative was more complicated than that.

                In the 1980s, many platforms were for the most part closed and never built that much of an expansion ecosystem. The C64 was a consumer product targeting the television as a display device, it was a novelty computer. The TRS-80 and others had the "big terminal" form factor enclosing nearly everything but your printer and Hayes modem.

                The Apple ][ was hardly small and had a lot of expansion options; I think the footprint of a decked out ][ with external

            • Ok, what is the use case?

              General use and personal preference. Not everything needs a use case. If it did we wouldn't have had smartphones in the first place as touch screens would be dead on arrival.

              Sometimes people just want nicer stuff without having to deal with pesky things like use cases. Use cases are for specific purpose phones like the Caterpillar CAT B30, not for stuff you're selling to the general population.

              If I had more of a preference I'd have a thinner bezel but a touch free zone on the border. It would look nicer but

              • Re: (Score:1)

                by lgw ( 121541 )

                Sometimes people just want nicer stuff without having to deal with pesky things like use cases.

                That's why Apple makes phones. If you want style, not pesky things like functionality, there's a whole, very successful, company that makes products just for you. Would be nice if one of the Android venders would make phones for the rest of us.

                It would look nicer but prevent inadvertent touches.

                That's a "use case", BTW.

        • I'd be perfectly OK with my phone being around 1cm thick if the battery lasted for 3+ days. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

          • No, I dare say we're probably not the only ones. 1cm is maybe a bit much, but ... hell, make it 1cm thick, if I can go for 2-3 days with GPS, Wifi and data transmit on... hell, make it an inch thick and gimme a week!

        • because if you maker it thinner then it will be less clunky when you put a case on it to prevent it from being damaged due to being too thin.

      • You paid 2k and expected to be able to use it indefinitely. We didn't know back then that computers would become obsolete so fast. We thought they would be like the washing machine that lasted twenty+ years and could be repaired ad nauseum, passed on to the kids, that sort of thing. We were told you could just update components. I remember when we bought our first hard drive and upgraded the ram, and got a new video card. Making the old beast better one piece at a time. It wasn't until the mid to late 90's

    • just think how easy it would have been if the phone had a user replaceable battery?

      Yes just think of all those additional devices that would catch fire because users can jam any old thing from ebay in there.

  • I have to admit I have no interest in this phone as my Note 3 still works perfectly fine but at the very least at least Samsung is making sure that they don't earn the reputation for their phone being faulty or explosive. So it's hard to say if this is really good or bad.

    • Re:Better safe than blown up I suppose. (Score:4, Funny)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday September 01, 2016 @05:38PM (#52811403)

      but at the very least at least Samsung is making sure that they don't earn the reputation for their phone being faulty or explosive.

      That's little-picture thinking - they need to think about the BIG PICTURE. This was a HUGE advertising possibility that they've now completely lost...

      "The New Samsung Galaxy Note 7 - EXPLOSIVELY Great!"
      "The New Samsung Galaxy Note 7 - So Great, It Will BLOW YOUR MIND!"

    • I have to admit I have no interest in this phone as my Note 3 still works perfectly fine but at the very least at least Samsung is making sure that they don't earn the reputation for their phone being faulty or explosive.

      I'm still on my Note 2. I am not a smartphone "power user", but I bought it because I wanted to program some apps. This phone has been horribly abused and dropped. The display has multiple cracks . . . but it still keeps ticking, like the EverReady Bunny Rabbit. I showed it to a colleague with the rank of "Fellow" in my company, and he told me that it was a mark of honor among hackers, to have a smartphone with a busted display, that still worked.

      Although the Note 2 has a replaceable battery, I've neve

    • at the very least at least Samsung is making sure that they don't earn the reputation for their phone being faulty or explosive. So it's hard to say if this is really good or bad.

      I'm guessing for whoever sold their old phone and now has no phone, this is bad.

  • Baloney (Score:5, Funny)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Thursday September 01, 2016 @12:40PM (#52809175) Homepage Journal
    I'm not sending mine back. I am using it right now to type this and it works just fi

  • Have to lie down in the bed you make (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Thursday September 01, 2016 @01:05PM (#52809395)

    The problem can be simply resolved by changing the battery

    So... do they think the decision to be more Apple-like and eliminate the user-swappable battery is still a good one?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I went from a Note 2 (swappable battery) to a Note 5 (not swappable) and this will be my last phone that does not allow me to swap the battery. I have found myself so many times now where my battery is dead or nearly dead and I have no choice but to rush to find a plug, then sit there and wait while it charges. Making the battery non-swappable is the fucking stupidest shit ever.

    • With the right desoldering/soldering tools it won't take any extra time to replace the battery... just an inconvenience for the consumer. Either way it will have to be sold as 'refurbished'.

      • I don't know about the note 7, but often batteries aren't soldered in for obvious reasons. Heating a lithium ion battery during servicing or manufacturing can be dangerous. The problem that faces samsung and apple is that their enclosures are held together with adhesive, which prevents servicing without some uncommon tools and usually a heat gun. Even the screen is glued to the glass making it difficult to replace the glass without replacing the whole digitizer+screen+glass. This wasn't always the case. Rep

    • Yes. You don't design a product around a small probability that a mistake may cause recall that you need to fix more cheaply. I mean this is a company that ships 75million working phones per quarter. Let me see you justify the business case for making the battery user swappable to avoid a recall when you have for a long time shipped 200m+ units per year without issue.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        How about you show me a pro consumer reason for NOT making battery user swappable? As I recall Samsung sold many phones before with removable batteries without issues.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Yup I know the Note 3 and 4 had removable batteries. As a Note 4 owner, this is VERY VERY VERY convenient as I always have a spare in the charger. Going out for the night? A quick swap and I'm worry free.

          Didn't get the Note 5 specifically because of the battery issue. Maybe they'll learn their lesson for the Note 8.

        • We could start with the ever increasing number of consumers calling for ever more waterproof and sealed devices, and the back cover of the Galaxy S5 is the single biggest sources of water ingress including a very fancy and easily defeated by dirt seal.

          There's also questions of design with Samsung's prior phones having been repeatedly reviewed as "feeling cheap" primarily due to the plastic clip on back to allow access to the battery. You could go down the LG route with a bottom entry carriage for the batter

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Trogre ( 513942 )

            Funny. I haven't seen a lot of consumers asking for waterproof, sealed devices.

            I have, however, seen phone companies telling me how much I apparently need one.

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion

            • Funny. I haven't seen a lot of consumers asking for waterproof, sealed devices.

              Maybe you should look around more. Do you think the decision for top of the line vanity phones has waterproof up the top? Or was it sales slowly declining as competitors come in at that space.

              Of course consumers want water proof phones. What they don't want is waterproof phones that look like they were designed from the ground up only to be waterproof, like most of the rugged phones on the market. Shit even here on Slashdot when we were discussing the absence of the 3.5mm socket there were people saying the

    • Well its not like they haven't had their own share of tax evasion scandles

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They seem to have learned from Apple's mistakes here. Instead of denial and a quiet "case by case" recall they are just fixing it.

      They avoided another -gate scandal, and all will be forgotten in a few weeks.

  • I'm so glad this happened to Samsung. I wish this sort of stuff would happen to every company that made pre-planned obsolescence/failure hardware.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Hell now. All user replaceable batteries does is ensure that whatever quality control you place on your supply chain, some user will buy something nasty off ebay and blow up their phone anyway.

      • Its also very very hard to acheive IP68 dust and water proofing if you have to also support cracking the phone open to change the battery.

        • Eh, they did it with the Galaxy 5, which I'm still using today. It's just a question of whether they are willing to do it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

          No it isn't. There are many many devices that can be opened and that are more waterproof than any smartphone will ever be.
          The ports (headphone, usb) and speaker are much harder to waterproof properly.

  • The most important thing is the safety of our customers and we don't want to disappoint our loyal customers

    Since when did "disappoint" mean "maim"?

    • I wish they'd recall my Galaxy Note 8.0 (tablet). It's a nice bit of hardware, and was great when I got it. They let Android 4 onto it, so now I can't use the SD card properly, and then they stopped doing any more software updates for it. In other words, they took away functionality and then cut it loose.

      I'm sure I don't need to go on about their shockingly poor 'value add' software that you can't uninstall. I've had 4 Samsung devices over the last few years. Yeah, I'm disappointed. I still can't quite brin

  • Software problem (Score:5, Funny)

    by hackertourist ( 2202674 ) on Thursday September 01, 2016 @03:38PM (#52810723)

    Some developer snuck in a HCF instruction...

  • If the batteries weren't embedded, then they wouldn't need a recall of the whole phone (assuming the issue is the battery itself and not some part of the charging system).

    All they would need to do is recall the battery and have users bring them in to swap for a good battery. As a bonus that's a *lot* less of a pain-in-the-a** for users who will now need to migrate all their data to a new device, or be out a phone in the interum.

  • Not ettLing Go of My Galaxy Note 3 (Score:3)

    by BrendaEM ( 871664 ) on Thursday September 01, 2016 @04:47PM (#52811137) Homepage

    There's not compelling reason to upgrade--especially if they forgot how to make phones.
    Let's see, pen sticks in barrel, no Micro-SD, and now: burning phones.

    I want a larger phone/tablet with a pen, but the F'n marketing people won't let us have one.

  • Don't shoehorn the name of the website in at the end of the title. The way it's written, it looks like "Yonhap News Agency" is the name of the phone.

  • Huh? Why was this reposted from yesterday?

  • Replacements shipping (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Chris453 ( 1092253 ) on Friday September 02, 2016 @07:26AM (#52814171)
    I wonder how they are going to handle the replacement process. Typically you return the defective product when you get the fixed version, but in this case is Fedex/UPS going to be OK shipping a defective device that might burst into flame? The announcement didn't specify if the battery issue was only triggered when recharging the device.

    • The announcement didn't specify anything at all about what is going wrong, except that the batteries appear to catch fire. I wish they were a bit more forthcoming with the details. Personally, I plan on holding on to mine until there are replacements in the pipeline as I traded in my old phone when I got the N7. I'm sure there are dangers, but at this point I'm willing to take that chance.

      • Be sure to make a video and post to facebook when it does catch fire. Just whip out your phone and.. oh... wait...

  • When you're selling millions of devices, .1% is thousands of problematic batteries. That's a really high percentage of potential catastrophes.

  • I'm sure the users were just holding it wrong...

  • No wonder they're exploding... they're undoubtedly overflowing with toxic masculinity.

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