At Least 26 Claimed Galaxy Note 7 Fire Reports Were Untrue, Samsung Says (zdnet.com) 106
Lately, a lot of behind the scene conversations have been suggesting that perhaps the Note 7 battery explosion fiasco has been blown out of the proportion. There's no evidence of any of that, so we won't discuss it any further, but amid all of this, Samsung has confirmed that at least 26 explosion reports that circulated everywhere were hoaxes. From a ZDNet report:Out of the 26 reports, the South Korean tech giant said that in 12 cases they found no fault with the devices. In seven cases, the reported victim could not be reached and in another seven incidents, the consumer cancelled the report or alleged that they threw away the device. In the US, where 1 million devices were recalled, nine such cases were reported. There were three in South Korea, two in France, and one each from the UK, Canada, Singapore, Philippines, Turkey, Vietnam, Croatia, Romania, Iraq, Lebanon, the UAE, and Czech Republic. In Korea, a worker at a convenience store alleged online that their phone exploded but Samsung said the person was currently unreachable. The user in Canada used a picture they found of the Note 7 catching fire and posed it as their own, the company said, and in Singapore, a user claimed they threw the handset out of their car when it caught fire but could not show proof.Makes you think doesn't it?
Unreachable? (Score:5, Funny)
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Uh, how did they make the report that the thing blew up if they had no way of communicating????
At the very least, they'd want to be available so they can get a refund or even damages.
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Smoke Signals.
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Uh, how did they make the report that the thing blew up if they had no way of communicating????
At the very least, they'd want to be available so they can get a refund or even damages.
They probably notified the doctor at the burn unit of the local emergency room.
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And yet, somehow, they were able to file a claim and provide a point of contact following the demise of their phone.
TBH, the headline should be 26 Cases of Samsung Note Fires Have No Evidence Of Being Caused By Faulty Phones. But that's long and not very click-baity so nobody would read it.
I expect HTC, Apple, and Huawai to all have phones experience a thermal runaway (referred to as an "explosion" by media) in the next 12 months. It's a numbers game, really, and not news in the sense that there's anything
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TBH, the headline should be 26 Cases of Samsung Note Fires Have No Evidence Of Being Caused By Faulty Phones. But that's long and not very click-baity so nobody would read it.
TBH, the headline should be "I'm not saying it was aliens, but it was aliens." Look at the beginning of the article:
Lately, a lot of behind the scene conversations have been suggesting that perhaps the Note 7 battery explosion fiasco has been blown out of the (sic) proportion. There's no evidence of any of that, so we won't discuss it any further, but
Then goes on to discuss it. At length.
Makes you think doesn't it?
Really? You went there? Manishs should just had the balls to have written a headline saying "Samsung Note 7s Actually Had No Problems, Everybody Look Over There" then gone back to trawling the dark corners of the web to find a post on a forum in Crimea where the user claimed that his iPhone 7 gave him cancer and post that story to Slashdot as a proven fac
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It's a numbers game, really, and not news in the sense that there's anything inherently wrong. Pack that much energy into a small, thin package and every so often one will fail.
Nice try, shill.
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Says the pot?
That is an entirely true statement, but it makes him a shill?
http://www.digitaltrends.com/m... [digitaltrends.com]
It isn't like Apple has been without any issues in this arena.
Even more unthinkable - throwing away burnt device (Score:2)
in another seven incidents, the consumer cancelled the report or alleged that they threw away the device.
Why would they throw away a burnt hunk of metal? They should have kept the smoldering remains!
Re:Even more unthinkable - throwing away burnt dev (Score:4, Interesting)
The bigger question is why you would throw away a $1000 device that was clearly faulty. Does everyone really have that kind of spare cash to say - meh, it's broken after a week, guess I'll just go buy something else.
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there is a burning object that happens to be with you in a car driving at considerable speed. What do you do?
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This sounds like something from a text adventure game.
Hmm.
>undo. undo. undo, undo, unplug phone
*Error, object "phone" not identified
>unplug note 7
*Error, "7" does not make sense in this context
> unplug Samsung Galaxy Note 7
*I don't understand what you are trying to do with the Samsung Galaxy Note 7
> remove Samsung Galaxy Note 7 from car
*Detaching the charging cable first
*Rolling down window first
*You fling the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 from your vehicle, injuring a pedestrian. He shouts for help an
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Well it costs $900. If you throw it away, you have a 100% chance of getting $0 back. If you keep it and turn it into your cellphone provider or Samsung directly, you have a 100% chance to get your $900 back, or your destroyed device exchanged for a new one without the defect.
So idk. Throw away that 'burnt hunk of metal' if you want. I'd prefer not to squander my $900.
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As evidence of purchase and the presence of a major fault, yes. Precisely.
When you have a car crash, do you not take photos? Record the names and addresses of witnesses, and the registration numbers of vehicles involved, even if only trivially? The simple failure to do such things is in itself something that an insurance investigator would take as a priori evidence of fraud and use it as justification for a deep i
Yup (Score:2, Insightful)
And it also turned out that some of the explosions have to do with idiot users buying cheap as shit chargers with bad or no resistors.
Of all things to cheap out on, the power equipment.
But because all sites need their good boy points with Apple so they can get exclusive coverage and free products, it's been a witch hunt against Samsung.
The ironic difference between Samsung and Apple here?
Samsung recalls shit when it breaks even with small numbers.
Apple waits a year to just start considering a repair program
Re:Yup (Score:4, Informative)
When I called Apple about a worn power cable, they said it's wear&tear. When I called back weeks later because it had evidently overheated and the plastic burnt off, they said it was customer abuse and refused to replace it. When I said that I'd seen reports on the web of this very same thing, they said they had no other reports of this sort.
I'm inclined to believe that the Apple procedure with safety matters is to pretend that nothing's wrong - I presume until some PR algorithm determines that it'd be against their interest to continue being dishonest.
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So... 100% (26 out of 26) of the explosions didn't actually happen, but of those that did, some were caused by idiot users misusing the device?
I wish the fanbois would get their story straight.
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It's the batteries exploding, not the chargers. Guess what phone chargers do? Provide 5V to the phone, nothing more. They are in no way responsible for the power delivered to the battery, the speed or condition of charge, protection of the cell, or anything at all else battery related.
What you going to blame next? The variability of renewable wind power for providing an unstable 240V supply to the charger for blowing up the battery in the phone?
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If the bad "charger" provides 115 Vac to the phone, it will definitely blow the battery. And maybe the phone even if there is no battery in it! 8-P
And some designs have the charger regulator circuitry in the "charger" "plug", and if it's bad it can over charge the battery (but I don't know about this one)...
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And some designs have the charger regulator circuitry in the "charger" "plug",
Except for any phone that has a USB port.
12!=26 (Score:1)
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That 12 is not all the devices. They're saying 12 of the 26 were not faulty, and they go on to mention other sections of the 26 that had other issues.
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They found no fault in 12 of the devices... because the user was holding it wrong.
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I read it as:
(12 examined the allegedly faulty device and found no fault) + (7 unreachable users) + (7 cancelled the report or threw away the device) = 26 fraudulent claims
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12!=479001600
ftfy
Totally overblown (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Totally overblown (Score:5, Funny)
I KNEW this was totally overblown. I have had my Note for weeks and am using it now. It hasn't had ANY issu
Dear Sir,
I am writing you to notify that you are infringing on my copyrighted 'lost carrier' joke. You will be hearing from my la*)NO CARRIER
A few could be reached (Score:2)
A few of the supposed victims managed to be reached, and they wanted to make clear that their device did not in fact explode nor did they get paid not to talk about it.
Not a surprise (Score:3)
Re:Not a surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm surprised it didn't happen with Tesla's autopilot
Maybe because of the relatively low number of Tesla owners.
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http://www.autoblog.com/2010/0... [autoblog.com]
You do realize that some of the cases were actually fraudulent? Just because some of them were real does not mean that all of them were real, there were a couple of high profile cases of fraud involved with the Toyota thing.
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What's supposed to be wrong with it? Other than the extra "the" at the end, it looks perfectly correct to me.
Well okay, I'd hyphenate "behind-the-scenes" as well, but I don't see anything deserving of mocking their language skills.
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I'd agree that the comment comes off as redundant and unscholarly, but there's nothing wrong with it from a grammar standpoint. "It" is the understood subject of the first clause...although there should really be a comma before "doesn't."
Just what is it that is supposed to make us think?
It should be blindingly obvious to anyone that it refers to the preceding summary. Reading between the lines, claims of falsified reports are supposed to make us think about how much mass recalls are due to hysteria vs. actual issues.
There are other problems with the summar
No proof does not mean did not happen (Score:1)
This summary is nonsense. Just because there isn't video evidence and a credible witness, and just because people don't like to answer their phones (that's pretty common nowadays), that does not mean the reports are made up. It means they might be made up. Huge difference.
No proof doesn't mean it did, either. (Score:1, Insightful)
So why claim it did happen, if there's not proof? I mean, no proof that Apple users have bought and deliberately destroyed their Samsung device to cause sales of the G7 to crash just before Apple bring out their new phone doesn't mean it didn't happen, right?
Except of course it does mean that we can't make the accusation.
In both cases.
26 out of how many? (Score:2, Interesting)
How many reports were there? Showing me that 26 are likely false doesn't mean much if there were over 100 to begin with whereas if there are 30 then it's likely that there's no problem with the phone. Numbers are only useful when taken in context.
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How many reports were there? Showing me that 26 are likely false doesn't mean much if there were over 100 to begin with whereas if there are 30 then it's likely that there's no problem with the phone. Numbers are only useful when taken in context.
These are independent things. There are phones that start burning. And there are phone owners who are lying (or not even phone owners, you don't need to own a phone to make a false claim). I think the statement isn't "there are much less burning phones then you'd think", but "there is a huge number of liars". Which surely doesn't come as a surprise to anyone.
Just a normal copycat cycle (Score:2)
Not unlike the recent rash of "but, but, it was the AUTOPILOT" claims from Tesla drivers after the first story broke.
Victim blaming (Score:2)
Victim blaming is one thing, but this is the kind of asshattery that makes you suspicious of everyone.
Not untrue for everyone (Score:2)
looking in the mirror (Score:1)
There is no reason to believe consumers are any more ethical than corporate suits. As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
I can believe it (Score:1)
While I can believe that some people have indeed suffered from device fires or possibly even explosions, we've already seen plenty of cases in the past where people blame their own misconduct/error on a popular defect, such as
* Telsa "autopilot"
* Toyota unintended acceleration
* etc
While those both had legitimate cases, there were also a number that were simply people trying to get out of blame (i.e. for causing an accident with their own behaviour) or make a buck (lawsuits).
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So the opposite of what you were claiming.
Whoops, I guess you never actually followed up on the story.
http://www.caranddriver.com/features/its-all-your-fault-the-dot-renders-its-verdict-on-toyotas-unintended-acceleration-scare-feature
people always do this (Score:4, Insightful)
People are idiots. Some want attention. Some want ad revenue. Some just are bored or something. This kind of thing always happens. It surely happens to Samsung's competitors too. It definitely happened to Toyota during the Prius acceleration scare (and surely Audi too so long ago).
You shouldn't take all reports as gospel. This shouldn't make you think, you should always be thinking.
In the end what really matters is whether Note 7s were experiencing battery fires at a higher rate than normal. And the answer still appears to be yes, clearly yes. So Samsung did the right thing with the recall.
Duh (Score:2)
I've been saying from the get go that most of these stories had to be fabricated. There's probably one or two legit cases of overheating, causing a fire. But there's simply not enough energy in one of these batteries to explode a car. It makes no sense. Further, these devices go through rigorous MTBF accelerated lifetime tests. The failure rate is known ahead of time to within a few per million. They know they'll never get it down to zero, so they find a threshold they think everybody will be OK with and sh
Reachability... (Score:2)
I'm sorry, it's too easy. I just can't.
X-D
Currently unreachable (Score:2, Redundant)
In Korea, a worker at a convenience store alleged online that their phone exploded but Samsung said the person was currently unreachable.
Maybe unreachable because their phone exploded?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Congratulations. Not only have you managed to imply that Apple are the bad guys and Samsung are the good guys in a case where Samsung phones blow up, you've also managed to trivialise a dangerous situation by comparing it to people getting poor signal. You'll be receiving your fanboy badge in the post.
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Is there a bit of PR behind this? Yeah. But at the same time I think this is a statement to those thinking of trying to get a settlement, "we can easily determine if you're lying".
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The Prius acceleration hoax turned out to be exactly that. Some complaints were found to be operator error. At least one was a deliberate scam attempt. The rest were based on not understanding the two braking systems.
Nevertheless, Toyota paid up to make it go away rather than fight each one separately.
Well, I know that Woz had a Prius with the problem; and he was able to repeatedly get it to do the uncontrolled acceleration thing by a (IIRC) specific, easily-repeatable sequence of gear-shifts and brake applications.
On my computer at home I've got the email reply he sent to me when I asked him about it (after his experience was reported in Slashdot [slashdot.org]).
So, stick that "hoax" bullshit up your ass. Woz was reportedly able to make it exhibit the uncontrolled-acceleration bug anytime he wanted.Toyota wasn't i
Samsung turned me into a newt! (Score:3)
I got better...
No, no, no (Score:2)
Makes you think doesn't it?
No, I'm an American, and in America no one can make you think. F-F-F-F-REEDOM!!
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Indeed. Politifact should change their icon to a Galaxy 7.
Re:politifact says: mostly true (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easy to twist perception when you provide a statistic without the context necessary to understand it.
For instance, saying that 26 reports are hoaxes makes it sounds like the issue is being massively overblown in the media. But we know from other reporting that Samsung has received at least 92 reports in the US alone [slashdot.org]. And according to the summary, only 9 of those 26 "hoax" reports originated in the US, so if we just take the numbers at face value, it would suggest that at least 90% of the reports are NOT hoaxes.
To say the least, putting it in that context paints a very different picture.
And that's before you even start to look at what they've deemed to be a "hoax". If you do so, you'll realize pretty quickly that what they've actually done is identify 26 cases that may be hoaxes. A more accurate way labeling of their numbers would suggest that 12 of the 26 worldwide reports were verifiably not the phone's fault, but that the remaining 14 were unverifiable one way or the other. Beyond that and you're starting to ascribe intent, rather than sticking to the facts.
If we want to get a better sense of what's actually going on, it makes sense to exclusively limit ourselves to verifiable reports. If we start by assuming that 12 of 26 is a representative approximation for how many reports are verifiable out of the ones Samsung labeled as "hoaxes", then it would suggest that roughly 4 of the 9 "hoax" reports from the US are verifiable and 5 are unverifiable. That leaves us with 87 reports (i.e. 92 - 5) that should be verifiable one way or the other, of which 83 (i.e. 87 - 4) would be verifiably accurate. Given that 1M units were sold in the US, we can say that the verifiable failure rate to date is 83 out of every 1M, with that number likely rising over time as more verifiable reports come in.
Unfortunately for Samsung, that number is WELL beyond the 24 out of every 1M [slashdot.org] estimation that they publicly stated a few weeks back, so it should come as no surprise that they'd be trying to put a positive spin on things.
And, of course, an easy way to put a positive spin on things is to throw out some big numbers in a vacuum and hope people don't ask too many questions. Which is what they seem to be doing here.