Samsung Halts Galaxy Note 7 Production Temporarily (wsj.com) 121
Samsung is halting production of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone after the replacement units -- the second batch of Note 7 produced -- by Samsung also seemed to be riddled with a similar issue, with nearly half a dozen of explosion and burning issues in the past week alone. Yonhap News Agency, and the WSJ are both reporting that the halt was done in cooperation with safety regulators from South Korea, China and the United States. From a WSJ report: Samsung's move comes after a spate of fresh reports of problems with replacement phones that have been distributed to consumers around the world. While Samsung hasn't confirmed the reports, it said in a statement Friday in response to one report that it would "move quickly to investigate the reported case to determine the cause and will share findings as soon as possible."
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Didn't stop them from spelling "Samsung" wrong.
Ha ha (Score:2, Funny)
Sent from my iPhone 7.
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Uh huh. And we didn't land on the moon either. Conspiracies, man! When will people wake up and realize their "facts" are lies, amirite?
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Uh huh. And we didn't land on the moon either. Conspiracies, man! When will people wake up and realize their "facts" are lies, amirite?
There's a Seeker born every minute!
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Exploding batteries on the Galaxy Note 7 are a fictional problem made up by Apple fanbois. This problem doesn't exist at all, no matter how much you wish it did.
Of course. Apple fanbois caused TWO Samsung recalls AND a PRODUCTION HALT.
Right.
Too much thin phones and thin batteries (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the quest for ever thinner phones and ever thinner batteries is to blame.
I want thicker phones with longer life.
I also think a battery-only recall would have been cheaper, so there is a lot to be said for removable batteries too.
I want user-replaceable batteries
I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I do know what I want.
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Re:Too much thin phones and thin batteries (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds much more like an overheating CPU too close to a way to cheap poorly insulated battery (internal batteries are much cheaper than user replace able batteries). The CPU alters the conditions of the battery, so the battery generates more heat, heating the CPU which heats the battery (higher temperatures more electrical resistance, leading to higher temperatures). So the design is inherently bad and the phone has to be scrapped IMHO they kind of deserve it for removing user replacebale batteries from Notes, https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com], I am a bad man ;D.
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If only there was a way for a massive tech company with highly skilled engineers to find out if a phone is overheating its batteries.
Like holding it in your hand, for example.
And why would they burst into flames when not in use and not charging? Only rtb61 knows the answer...maybe Samsung could hire him!
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If they did that it is not surprising why it failed. It really is much more complex than that. Variability in battery manufacture, variability in CPU heat output, environmental conditions not just current but the worst condition recently experienced (phone on car dash for too long, affecting future performance of the battery), improperly coded applications driving the CPU to maximum use uncontrollably. So a complex conjunction of all of those events triggering catastrophic failure over time (dependent upon
Re:Too much thin phones and thin batteries (Score:5, Interesting)
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Assuming of course the sensors are in the right place.
Bottom line, I still have my old Samsung Note 7 (pre-recall) because 1) I don't believe they solved the problem and 2) The old phone has a software limit on charging speed.
I suspect the real solution will be the Note 8
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When you rapid charge batteries it can do funny things to the chemistry, and plus you are expecting rapid temperature rise and high current flow that would be the normal danger signs when there is a battery fault like a short. I think it's likely that their batteries are the same quality as ever, it's just that they can't detect when they are about to explode any more because the conditions are too similar to a normal rapid charging session.
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Dendrites are usually caused by overcharging, which as you previously mentioned, would indicate either a charge circuit design flaw (e.g. too high a charge voltage) or a hardware/firmware bug that causes the charger to stay in rapid charge mode for too long. But the GP is also correct in saying that rapid charging makes it more challenging to choose the proper temperature cutoffs to prevent thermal runaway.
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When you rapid charge batteries it can do funny things to the chemistry, and plus you are expecting rapid temperature rise and high current flow that would be the normal danger signs when there is a battery fault like a short. I think it's likely that their batteries are the same quality as ever, it's just that they can't detect when they are about to explode any more because the conditions are too similar to a normal rapid charging session.
There you go!
As I have said repeatedly, their marketing droids said "What?!? We can't have a FOUR HOUR charge time when the iPhone charges in TWO HOURS! I don't care if the battery is twice the size. Make it happen!!!"
And so they went back to the battery data, and redesigned the charging profiles so that they used the "Maximum Limit" on temperature as the "Spec" instead of the "Recommended Limit".
And now, Witness the result.
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Here [express.co.uk] is what a Galaxy Note7 looks like inside. The CPU is behind the metal cover left of the battery. This is basically how most modern phones look like inside (except Sony, they still have the CPU above the battery).
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The last batch of "fixed" phones that have caught on fire have not even been in use. The last few caught fire during the night when hooked up to a charger. They seem to be catching fire around 4 - 5 AM, which assuming the phone was plugged in at midnight of before, should be after the battery is fully charged. So at first blush it would seem the batteries are being overcharged. However, the phone that caught on fire on the airplane was apparently not in use or plugged in. In fact he said he had turned it o
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and since it didn't manifest in Samsung's testing, they hoped it was purely a problem with the other batteries.
FTFY
I blame the future!!! (Score:2)
Cure you and your futuristic technology. Why can't we just stick to the technology of 10 years ago.
I mean just ask Sony batteries never exploded then!
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I think the quest for ever thinner phones and ever thinner batteries is to blame.
I want thicker phones with longer life.
What I think you're trying to say is that you want a bigger fire!
Well IBM can help you with that. A device that doesn't comfortably fit in any pocket and actually meets the common definition not just the media definition of"exploded".
The solution here is not more lithium.
This never happened with my land-line phone! (Score:4, Interesting)
This quest for ever thinner phones with their thin batteries is only to blame if you dislike the downsides of pushing technology forward.
Any time you demand a considerable amount of energy storage in a small package, it has a certain amount of danger of catching fire or exploding.
We've randomly seen various models of laptops catch fire or explode too, and many of those weren't all that thin, nor would you describe their batteries as "thin" -- especially compared to any smartphone ever manufactured.
I can't say I know exactly where Samsung is failing this particular time, since competitors have similar sized devices with similar sized batteries that are clearly working more reliably? But it sounds like they wrote things off as a simple battery production defect when it might turn out to be a more complicated problem to fix. (As someone else said - maybe they have the battery sitting too close to the CPU or other chips that help warm it up past a safe operational parameter?)
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Everyone knows that the thinner it gets the more volatile it is, which is why paper explodes so spectacularly [youtu.be]. Just hope they never make a paper thin phone, especially one made out of wood products. Fortunately I hear wood isn't a very good conductor.
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Pushing technology forward doesn't have to mean thinner phones.
You can push technology forward by creating longer lasting phones, and that would be more beneficial to most of us than shaving off another 1mm from the thickness.
We've reached the point where phones are thin enough for now. Concentrate on improving other things, and including the features we want instead of getting rid of them for the sake of thinness. We're literally regressing in features in order to free up space and make phones thinner.
I'm
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Hell, look at the so-called hoverboards. Those things aren't thin, or small. And yet they regularly burst into flame
Samsung had a problem with Samsung-made batteries, so they replaced it with their other supplier. But then they revealed there's a further problem with their battery manageme
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I think the quest for ever thinner phones and ever thinner batteries is to blame.
I want thicker phones with longer life.
I also think a battery-only recall would have been cheaper, so there is a lot to be said for removable batteries too.
I want user-replaceable batteries
I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I do know what I want.
The problem is they cannot figure out whether it's a battery issue or the phone is making the batteries explode. Now with the replacement Note 7's exploding it seems more like the latter case because I am sure in the replacement phones the least they would have done is replace the batteries with a different kind.
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3500 mAh is a problem. Just stick to 3200 and optimize the apps (we have been doing it for 60 years, and until they will discover something like Moore law for batteries, I guess will have to stick to software optimization for now)
My previous phone was Droid Maxx, first phone with 3500 mAh battery and it was hitting like crazy. Eventually it started to bulge (luckily after retirement), and I disassembled it and disposed of it before it exploded.
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3500 mAh is a problem.
It is when you try to charge it in the same time that Apple charges the iPhone's 2000 mAh battery. My iPhone 6 Plus charges from 0 to 100% in 2 hours (maybe even less), and barely gets warm to the touch (I'd say about 40-42 deg. C outside case temp as a guess, based on skin temp).
And keep in mind that, according to Ars Technica's testing, the iPhone 7 with nearly 1/2 the battery size, gets about 96% of the battery-life under similar conditions as the GN7, (and the 7 plus gets better life than the GN7).
S
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go back 20 years and all the big phone hits are thin phones with crappy batteries. StarTac, Motorola Razr.
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Peak Fumble (Score:2)
I think the quest for ever thinner phones and ever thinner batteries is to blame.
MARKETING! STAT! New product and campaign. Moshi moshi.
New phone rounded edges and corners thinner no buttons.
Like all our other phones?
No, different. Quadrilateral yet not rectangular. This shape.
That is a coffin shape. Looks like.
Yes I drew it much to show, but real angle here no more than 5 degrees off vertical.
But everything we make is rectangular! People want display go to edge.
Make people want this instead. Put button or something in edge part, new shape is important.
Why this idea? Why now?
We must cha
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in the past it was all the cheap batteries people bought on the internet that used to result in fires and explosions
Be optimistic. Also, yo dawg. (Score:2)
Third time luck!
Wasted headline opportunity (Score:1)
"Samsung Galaxy Note 7 production bombs"
"Samsung Galaxy Note 7 business is booming"
"Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is a product truly built to blast"
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Samsung overcharged for quality assurance services.
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But but the users are the testers. Just ask Microsoft?
QA is a cost center that adds no ROI or any business value and takes away from shipping our product to the customers for Christmas.
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SAMSUNG GALAXY NOTE 7
Guaranteed to give you more bang for your buck.
.... a supernova in your pocket.
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"Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is a product truly built to blast"
I like that one.
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I think its more than just thinner devices. Keep on adding parts and whatnot is the culprit. Apple right can do it right, but Samsung is running into problems trying to do what Apple is doing.
Oh you mean like this [independent.co.uk]?
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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It’s a grim echo of the Note 7’s spontaneous combustion, but it’s probably not a problem on anything like the scale of Samsung’s
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I think its more than just thinner devices. Keep on adding parts and whatnot is the culprit. Apple right can do it right, but Samsung is running into problems trying to do what Apple is doing.
Weird.
It's almost as if somebody's managed to connect to the Internet but they never heard of a single site where you can type "iPhone fire" and see pages of results.
(shrug)
Re: more than just thinner (Score:2)
You missed a spot (Score:2)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new... [telegraph.co.uk]
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Apple is a company who only builds overpriced shit
Overpriced yes, shit no.
Re:Impossible (Score:5, Insightful)
It can't be over priced if the market is bearing that price. The value of any product is exactly what the public is willing to pay for it.
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The thing is the iPhone is not something essential and there are thousands of alternatives out there.
Value of something IS what the market will bear (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a dangerous way to think.
Products ARE worth what people are willing to pay for them. That is a cold stone fact. It's not a "dangerous way to think" because it's simply the truth. You fail to acknowledge that truth at your peril. It's like saying gravity is a dangerous way to think. That argument makes no sense because it implies that a law of nature is somehow a point of view. It isn't. Products are worth what the market will bear is in economics as close to a fundamental law of nature as you will find. It's right up there with supply and demand effects on price.
It is that kind of thinking that leads to 500% increases in the cost of life saving drugs just for the heck of it
Which is why most sane countries regulate the price of drugs to avoid that exact circumstance because health care is needed by everyone. And even in the crazy US we regulate a lot of markets (electricity, telephone, water, etc) where there is a risk of a utility abusing its monopoly on a product. The value of a product is what people are willing to pay for it. When the consequences of not paying for it are possible death, the value of that product can be very high if there is no alternative source for it.
So no, the value of something isn't what the market will bear, otherwise you'd be paying millions for clean air.
You are conflating some very different things. First off we ARE paying millions (billions really) for clean air as a society. The price of it is rolled into the cost of the products you buy. Those environmental regulations aren't free. (and that's not a bad thing either) Second, we are perfectly capable of regulating monopolies to keep them from getting out of hand. We do this all the time. Third, the value of something in economic terms absolutely IS what people are willing to pay for it. Some things are public goods [wikipedia.org] and we have to be careful about ensuring they remain so but the value of fresh water or breathable air is tremendously high - we've just organized our legal system to ensure they are available to all.
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Products ARE worth what people are willing to pay for them.
No, that is not true under our current system in which you get to hand-wave away externalities. If people had to actually pay the entire cost of a gadget, then it would be true. If the actual environmental cost of production were baked into every device, whether by taxing and spending those revenues on cleanup or by making it more expensive to create the device by controlling emissions and energy consumption up front, then people would be able to make intelligent choices about what something is worth.
Everyo
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Products ARE worth what people are willing to pay for them. That is a cold stone fact..
The price is determined by what the buyer is prepared to pay, and what the seller is willing to accept. It is rare, but an ethical seller can decide a price is too *high* and refuse to sell except at a lower price.
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It can't be over priced if the market is bearing that price. The value of any product is exactly what the public is willing to pay for it.
I think "overpriced" is more relative to the one who says it's overpriced. MacDonald's is rather cheap, but I think it's overpriced because the quality is low and the heath risk is high.
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Apple is a company who only builds overpriced shit
Overpriced yes, shit no.
Considering the GN7 costs MORE than an equivalent memory iPhone 7 (and even 7 Plus!), I don't know where you're getting your "overpriced" meme, Jackson!
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Your a fucking idiot
Ya know, calling another an "idiot" is ever-so-much more effective if you actually know how to use your/you're correctly.
Idiot.
Can we PLEASE just ban ACs now? Pretty please?!?
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No, grow a thicker skin fanboi.
What does my dermal thickness have to do with your lack of language skills?
I just love the way ACs can dish it out all day long, but can't take even one little negative observation of themselves.
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Apple is a company who only builds overpriced shit. I bet I could find an Android smartphone with the iPhone 7 specs for $100. Also Steve Jobs is dead, therefore Apple is DOOMED.
I'll take that bet now get to work...
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Then do it. Find an Android smartphone with the performance of iPhone 7, the cameras, the features - all for $100.
Put up or shut up. I know you won't be able to, because no Android phone has the performance alone, much less the other stuff. And the best performing Android phones are far more than $100.
So prove me wrong. Link a $100 Android phone that has the performance of an iPhone 7.
Why even bother? (Score:3)
Realistically as other have said....how much money could Samsung have saved if they had made the battery removable and just sent everyone a replacement battery?
If that's not the issue, then obviously that's not going to solve the problem, but the quest for super thin phones is the cause of these issues. Why make a phone this thin if you're just going to put it in an otterbox?
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Because you can use a thinner otterbox
Root cause undetermined (Score:2)
Realistically as other have said....how much money could Samsung have saved if they had made the battery removable and just sent everyone a replacement battery?
You are presuming the battery is the actual root cause of the problem. Odds are very good that the source of the failure is somewhere else. In fact swapping the battery appears to be the first thing Samsung actually did and they still are having problems.
If that's not the issue, then obviously that's not going to solve the problem, but the quest for super thin phones is the cause of these issues.
It's not at all clear that that is true. Nobody currently knows what they actual cause of the problem is including apparently Samsung. It could be buggy control software. It could be improperly designed thermal management. It could be from physical da
*Because* the put it in an otterbox. (Score:2)
I don't use protectors of any kind, but I knew more than just a couple middle-America, middle-class folks who ALWAYS get the hardest, most solid-looking case they can find (irrespective of whether these actually help or which cases perform best). Why? Because their phone is one of their largest investments and a critical piece of everyday tech that they want to protect.
They appreciate the thinnest phone possible precisely because *after* they put it in an Otterbox it will still be manageable, whereas when t
Design a better phone (Score:2)
They appreciate the thinnest phone possible precisely because *after* they put it in an Otterbox it will still be manageable, whereas when they had an iPhone 4 or whatever, the Otterbox made it significantly thicker than an old Nokia candybar.
Or a better solution could be for Apple (and other smartphone makers) to release a phone that didn't actually require a protective case in the first place. Design it so that it can take a beating. Yes this would be thicker and speaking solely for myself I would be fine with that. Nobody used to have a protective case on their Nokia because it didn't need one. There is no fundamental reason why smartphones have to be different in that regard.
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Realistically as other have said....how much money could Samsung have saved if they had made the battery removable and just sent everyone a replacement battery?
Probably very little. Consider
a) they have a massive logistics network around the world which makes the cost of shipping products tiny.
b) they have a massive amount of cheap labour to effect a repair.
c) as a producer of the parts including the display itself they have very low part replacement costs.
d) having an all in one glued shut case is significantly cheaper to design and may even be cheaper to manufacture.
e) the problems which have occurred need to be examined by comparing to the total number of devic
Schadenfreude (Score:1)
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I am deriving lots of schadenfreude from this fracas. I just hope that Samsung, a rather despicable company, with their heavy-handedness, built-in obsolescence, arrogance, and useless customer service, will not recover from this.
Not to mention that they wouldn't even have a viable Smartphone business at this point if they hadn't copied the original iPhone (and in fact, every other iPhone thereafter) down to nearly the last pixel.
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You are so correct, I am so happy apple pioneered the use of a excellent built in stylus and wireless charging.
They had a stylus with the Newton; so, yes, yes they did pioneer the stylus.
But actually NOT, I am informed by the interwebs that the first use of a Stylus was in 1957 with a device called, appropriately enough, "The Styalator" [wikipedia.org]. But it is interesting to note that, in the History of "Pen Computing" [wikipedia.org] (which actually somewhat dates back to the 1880s!!!), Samsung is mentioned NOWHERE (but the Newton, ahem, IS)...
As for wireless charging, actually I "pioneered" it (but for laptops) almost 7 or 8 years before
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Two words (Score:2)
Replaceable batteries
On word... (Score:2)
Just temporarly? (Score:2)
Could be transport conditions (Score:2)
So, likely Samsung could not really reproduce the defect and verify the causes in their own lab or they would not have shipped replacement devices with same defect.
One possibility is that the battery, charging circuits or even the heat dissipating glue to keep the battery in-place gets damaged during shipment. How much control is there on sea containers for extreme temperature variations, humidity or vibrations?
I can figure thermal glue loosing contact with the battery (or other hot operating component) on
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Apple continues to sell its iPhone 6 with touch-illness, without acknowledging it at all. Why do Samsung get so much flak and shit, when they are doing everything they can to fix this? If you want someone to call the worst and dishonest of the phone manufacturers, look to Apple instead.
1. This iPhone 6 isn't for sale anymore. You're thinking of the 6s. Do try to keep up, Hater.
2. The issue with the display controllers is a damned PRODUCTION issue, not a DESIGN flaw.
If you want someone to blame, blame the fucking EU with their damned RoHS directives. If electronic solder still had LEAD in it, like God intended, we wouldn't have BGA parts breaking-free from their PCBs at the slightest provocation. Metallurgy has developed over centuries, but with a stroke of a pen, the chemists were sen
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If you want someone to blame, blame the fucking EU with their damned RoHS directives. If electronic solder still had LEAD in it, like God intended, we wouldn't have BGA parts breaking-free from their PCBs at the slightest provocation. Metallurgy has developed over centuries, but with a stroke of a pen, the chemists were sent back to the drawing board to find a substitute for that which has no substitute.
God intended kids in poor countries who end up mining first world disposable e-trash to get lead poisoning.
And before you say "But no one else has this problem", do a little Googling. You'll find LOTS of similar problems with HTC, LG, Samsung, etc. It's a RoHS thing; but none of those other phones (unless they catch on fire a lot) make for Clickbait on Slashdot like the iPhone does. But the stories are there. But do your own research, Hater
Problems and solutions associated with removing lead are well studied and widely implemented. If your still making EXCUSES for vendors who failed to adapt and get the memo some dozen years after the fact that's on you. Customers don't care about lame excuses they care about outcomes.
There is no excuse for unsafe or failure prone products by any vendor.
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Problems and solutions associated with removing lead are well studied and widely implemented.
Yes, and every single one of them is INFERIOR in one or more ways to Lead.
Look, I get it for water pipes. Making plumbing solder Lead-Free was generally a Good Thing. But for electronics, a "reclamation" system would have been a far better solution than making every single solder joint since around 2006 suck serious ass.
And if you think this is an "Apple" or "Contract Manufacturer" problem, it is FAR from that simple. There's real metallurgy going on in eutectic soldering, and some of that "black magic"