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Hardware

Samsung Permanently Discontinues Galaxy Note 7 (twitter.com) 251

After the replacement units of Galaxy Note 7 also started to catch fire, Samsung is now permanently discontinuing its latest flagship smartphone (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternate source), the company said today. The news comes a day after Samsung halted sales of Note 7 once again and began asking users to return the device. So far nearly 50 incidents of Note 7 causing fires have been reported. More importantly, many people have been physically injured with their new Galaxy phone catching fire. WSJ reports: Samsung said in a filing with South Korean regulators on Tuesday that it would permanently cease sales of the device, a day after it announced a temporary halt to production of the smartphones. "Taking our customer's safety as our highest priority, we have decided to halt sales and production of the Galaxy Note 7," the company said. The move comes on a day when Samsung shares tumbled 8%, its biggest one-day decline in eight years, amid increasing pressure after a new string of reported smartphone fires in the U.S.
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Samsung Permanently Discontinues Galaxy Note 7

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  • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @04:36AM (#53053671) Homepage Journal

    The US CPSC has asked consumers to power down all Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones [go.com], whether original or replacement. As in, permanently.

  • Why the hate? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @04:41AM (#53053691)

    Ok I admit that I use iOS devices more than android. But why the hate towards Samsung with the good riddance.
    I would much rather see them fix the phone so it's users will have a nice safe phone. Vs what it would be now a possibility exploding collectors item. That in 20 years you can sell to a collector for about a grand.

    Samsung has been pushing the quality of Android phones. They are no longer cheap Apple rip offs but their own phone market. Where Apple has to take notice and the competition impress their phone as well.

    • Re:Why the hate? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TwentyCharsIsNotEnou ( 1255582 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @04:54AM (#53053747)

      That in 20 years you can sell to a collector for about a grand.

      It costs almost a grand today!!

      • by Zocalo ( 252965 )

        That in 20 years you can sell to a collector for about a grand.

        It costs almost a grand today!!

        Standard disclaimer applies: The value of your collectible may go down, as well as plummet.

    • Ok I admit that I use iOS devices more than android. But why the hate towards Samsung with the good riddance.

      What I so of like to know is why there are now two posts asking "why all the hate" when at the time of posting nobody is hating? The only one even slightly close is hating on Apple (and has been modded down).

      Yes, Samsung should fix the phones, but their attempt to do so has resulted in an equally explosive phone. At this point, for PR reasons they need to release a new phone with another name. They will still have to replace the existing customers' phones, but they will do it with a model that has the model

    • Re: Why the hate? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Agreed. I use iOS and I'm not happy Samsung is having these problems. Maybe I'm one of those weirdos who sees no reason to get tribalistic over corporations.

      Pro tip: corporations are neither a friend nor a banner to which you should rally. Their goal is to sell stuff.

    • Ok I admit that I use iOS devices more than android. But why the hate towards Samsung with the good riddance.

      I'm not seeing any hate except from a few Apple Extremists. Mostly I'm seeing surprise/shock that they could fuckup on this magnitude.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I don't hate Samsung, but the fiasco over the replacement phones exploding and leading to such a quick EOL is a tad amusing, if sad.

      I have 3 phones - an iPhone 7, a Lumia 550 and a Moto-X for the Android. Also, 2 tablets - a Verizon Ellipsis 10 and an iPad Mini. I just think Galaxy phones are too common, which is why for Android phones, I just avoided them altogether. Yeah, one could say the same about 7, but I needed it for both FaceTime and Apple Pay. Otherwise, I like my Lumia, but for the fact tha

    • Samsung is not about "pushing quality". They never have been. Samsung has always been about ripping off other companies' designs, using cheaper lower quality components and crappy software, and undercutting their betters.

      And it's not just Apple by a long shot. Before the ripping off Apple, Samsung was all about ripping off Blackberry. They even had the chutzpah to name one of their Blackberry knock-offs the "Blackjack". Before that, they were copying Motorola with imitation RAZRs and SLVRs. Nor is it

  • Damn (Score:5, Insightful)

    by vadim_t ( 324782 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @04:53AM (#53053741) Homepage

    Heads are going to roll all around after an event like this one.

    Somebody will probably end up writing a book on what went on inside, because I imagine that the internal meetings had some serious drama involved.

    I hope there's going to be a post-mortem at some point, because it would be very interesting to find out what went wrong in the end. Rogue manufacturer? Bad quality control? Maybe the phone doing something wrong with charging, as somebody suggested on reddit?

    • Re:Damn (Score:5, Interesting)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @05:04AM (#53053801) Homepage Journal

      What happens to people who bought it on contract? Say there is no other phone from that carrier you want, you still have 23 months of contract left and didn't really get any use out of the first month anyway...

    • Re:Damn (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SlovakWakko ( 1025878 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @05:16AM (#53053837)
      Quality control, firmware responsible for charging - these can be easily changed. I think it has to be a serious design error which cannot be repaired without physically altering the case/PCB. Like a chip which gets hot under certain conditions is located too close to the battery, or something similar.
      • Damage to reputation cannot be repaired with a firmware patch. At some point it becomes cheaper to eat the cost of taking all of the returns back rather than risk future sales.

        Remember, FDIV established Pentium as a brand that the manufacturer would stand behind and in the end was considered a financial win. OTOH it didn't set anyone on fire.

    • Re: Damn (Score:5, Interesting)

      by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @06:03AM (#53053929)
      I'm doubtful that "heads will roll". The manufacturing process is a risky one and higher ups usually accept a level of risk. As for the problem itself, last I heard it was a defect in the entire process. The case itself shrinks and expands with usage. The battery wasn't sized properly. The pressure fitting can produce jagged edges from the expanding and contacting. Additionally the positive and negative ends are incredibly close on the battery. So the idea I've heard is that the expanding and contacting case eventually produces jagged edges on the pressure plate which cause shorts in the battery. Again that's just what I've heard, but it sounds like a failure from the ground up.
    • Please, it's not even a real news story until someone coins a "-gate" name to it. /s
    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Heads are going to roll all around after an event like this one.

      Somebody will probably end up writing a book on what went on inside, because I imagine that the internal meetings had some serious drama involved.

      I hope there's going to be a post-mortem at some point, because it would be very interesting to find out what went wrong in the end. Rogue manufacturer? Bad quality control? Maybe the phone doing something wrong with charging, as somebody suggested on reddit?

      Problem is, it's probably the wrong heads.

  • by MrKaos ( 858439 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @04:56AM (#53053759) Journal

    I could care less, but then I wouldn't have posted at all.

  • Good (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Trogre ( 513942 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @05:23AM (#53053853) Homepage

    Now, Samsung, kindly go back to producing 10 and 12 inch tablets with proper S Pen support and Miracast.

    • Hear, Hear! I love my Note 12.1 Pro. I'd like to get a couple more.

      • by spyfrog ( 552673 )

        YES! The old Note 12.1 Pro is getting slow.
        Also, start to support your so called "high end" devices. 5.0.2 as the latest OS for 12.1 "pro"?? It should have gotten 6.0.2 at least.

  • ...for new year's eve. It will make an amazing firework!
  • by rikkards ( 98006 )

    I am more concerned with my exploding toploading washer

  • deep effects (Score:5, Insightful)

    by supernova87a ( 532540 ) <kepler1&hotmail,com> on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @06:31AM (#53054019)
    Wow, can you imagine the amount of upset this will cause to the supply chain and also to the thousands of people involved in designing, building, and who were supposed to sell this phone?

    The assembly and manufacture of these phones employs thousands of people, spins up parts supply chains for years (and already did for months in preparation), and was planned to use a significant chunk of the global capacity of glass, machine tools, electronic components, transportation, labor, etc. Now which all will have to find new places to go, which will take more than a few months.

    Regardless of how you feel about Samsung in general, the "hidden", not as public, effects of this very big mistake will affect many, many peoples' lives in a real way (aside from a handful of people at the top).
    • by swb ( 14022 )

      I'd guess Samsung isn't exiting the phablet market but has some serious design flaw in this particular phablet that requires an engineering overhaul greater than can be accomplished with just tweaks.

      Once they figure out what it is, they will probably release a new model that is basically the old one with the changes. We don't yet know what the actual problem is, but its likely the Note 8 or whatever they will call it will still tap the same component supply chain for the most part -- displays, flash, camer

      • I'd guess Samsung isn't exiting the phablet market but has some serious design flaw in this particular phablet that requires an engineering overhaul greater than can be accomplished with just tweaks.

        Even if it just required "tweaks", they probably wouldn't want to re-release the phone under the Note 7 name because of all the bad press. I would expect a new phone with suspiciously-similar features but a new name before too long.

  • I wonder what kind of culture exists with Samsung.
    I bet that at some point one of these two tings have been brought up by engineers within the company:
    • - The Note 7 battery has too high a capacity for the space that it occupies. Or serious missgivings about some other technical aspect.
    • - The Note 7 battery testing has not been through enough or performed long enough to ensure 100% stability.

    Why was this information not passed on? What manager didn't react to it?
    This goes way beyond a simple hardware issue

  • A new feature? (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by Max_W ( 812974 )
    What if we look at it as a feature, not a bug? An initial hypothesis for further brainstorming, - imagine if a person breaks a law, and there is a court decision for it, the special message is sent to the criminal's smartphone, wherever he is, and the smartphone ignites.

    It could be used also in cases when a smartphone is stolen.
  • Statement (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by Rik Sweeney ( 471717 )

    I imagine Samsung will issue a statement later saying that removing the Note 7 from production took "courage".

  • There was nothing wrong with the phones except the smart battery management was being hijacked by malware. Typically its hardware but often there is a bus and if it is possible to update the firmware remotely then it's a hacking dream to full on make phones explode.
    • by caseih ( 160668 )

      If true then that means the phones certainly were defective by design and should be a lesson to all manufacturers. So it wouldn't be funny at all, but hopefully would be a strong lesson.

      In this case, we know that the problems stem from a bad physical design primarily.

  • They should pull the batteries, fill the spot with epoxy (to prevent people from putting batteries back in them), and resell the devices as cheap tethered tablets.

    They won't be able to sell them high enough to make up the cost of the device, but at least they'd get some money.

    • Hardware changes would be required as the phone will not boot without the battery pack's being connected. Besides if I've got to run a tethered device I may as well use my laptop or just sit at my desktop.

  • Ship all the remaining Note 7's to North Korea, so that they can use them in their weapons
  • They'll just make a permanent fix for the problem and issue a new version of the phone. It's not like they don't know how to make phones that won't catch fire.

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