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.
This is not even the most hilarious news (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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)
That in 20 years you can sell to a collector for about a grand.
It costs almost a grand today!!
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Standard disclaimer applies: The value of your collectible may go down, as well as plummet.
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He didn't mention currency... Pesos?
Wouldn't it be a lot cheaper with Iranian Rial? ;)
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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)
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.
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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.
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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
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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
Re: Why the hate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Damn (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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...
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Same thing that happens with every contract when it's voided by one of the parties.
Re:Damn (Score:5, Insightful)
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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)
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Problem is, it's probably the wrong heads.
I cared enough to post this (Score:5, Funny)
I could care less, but then I wouldn't have posted at all.
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Good (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, Samsung, kindly go back to producing 10 and 12 inch tablets with proper S Pen support and Miracast.
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Hear, Hear! I love my Note 12.1 Pro. I'd like to get a couple more.
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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.
Galaxy 7 will be back on the shelves... (Score:2)
Meh (Score:2)
I am more concerned with my exploding toploading washer
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I am more concerned with my exploding toploading washer
Have you tried putting a Galaxy 7 inside your washer ?
No, silly, he's talking about their exploding washer line. If the load is heavy enough, and the washer agitates just enough, the power circuit board shorts out and blows up.
Maybe he thought the two explosions would cancel each other out.
deep effects (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
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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
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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.
Samsung company culture (Score:2)
I bet that at some point one of these two tings have been brought up by engineers within the company:
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)
It could be used also in cases when a smartphone is stolen.
Statement (Score:2, Flamebait)
I imagine Samsung will issue a statement later saying that removing the Note 7 from production took "courage".
Wouldn't it be funny if (Score:2)
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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 resell them (Score:2)
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.
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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.
Here's another plan (Score:2)
Awaiting Galaxy 8 (Score:2)
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.
Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
I heard about the touch disease. But not the phones exploding when using approved devices. There were some issues a while back where people got some third party chargers that they were plugging there phone straight into the AC socket.
As for the Touch Disease it is a problem but it isn't affecting people's safety.
Re: Sad (Score:2)
As far as I know all exploded notes were caused by using cheap and broken usb cables so I'm not sure that point is valid.
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Considering that the charger is in the phone itself and all the usb cable does is provide 5v power to the phone, how could the cable cause the battery to catch fire?
Pretty easily, if your name is Wile E. Coyote.
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AC fanbois' diversionary tactics are working marvelously in this thread
Level of disaster prevention (Score:5, Informative)
Considering that the charger is in the phone itself
This circuitry's job is "only" to take care of the lithium cells.
It's a very critical task (avoid over current, avoid over voltage, avoid over heating, avoid over charge, avoid too fast charging, avoid a deep dis-charge, refuse to charge after a dangerously too deep discharge, etc. Basically Lithium has a tendency to explode if you look it the wrong way).
But it still only just this task.
It guarantees nothing else beyond this task.
and all the usb cable does is provide 5v power to the phone
THAT is the point of failure.
Everything assumes that the cable will provide more or less around 5v.
And there's circuitry to shut down the input if veers a a little bit too much away from the safe zone around 5v.
But some ultra-cheap no-name chargers are built hastily.
To save costs and speed up deliveries, the circuitry tends to be over simplified and the skip on some security features.
The cheapest sub-5$ chargers ARE NOT fail safe.
how could the cable cause the battery to catch fire?
The shitty after-market charger could over heat, melt some electrical paths, and suddenly wire it's output path straight to the 100-240V AC input.
Suddenly this USB charger has managed to transform your 5v USB charging cable into the USB cousin of The "Etherkiller".
And the security inside most smartphones was never meant to be exposed to 100-240V AC 10-20A.
The 5W it usually operates at is magnitude smaller than what can be delivered when such a fault happens.
At that point everything overheats massively and catches fire:
- charger, cable, whole smartphone...
Even if the battery by some magic wasn't exposed to the shock, the subsequent fire of everything around it will make it explode.
In other words (incoming ob. car analogy !) you're complaining that the wind-shield of your car is damaged although it was supposed to be bullet proof when in practice the whole street was levelled by a nuke dropped from low-orbit.
Final score:
Smartphone : 0
USB-killer : 1
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In a properly designed phone, the internal charge circuitry will regulate the voltage down to maintain a safe charge rate. In a poorly designed phone, they depend on the charger not being capable of providing a dangerously high charge current. In that case, the "approved" charger will have voltage sag reducing the charge rate. When that is the case, if you use a high capacity power supply that doesn't sag, the battery may blow.
Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of funny how people call Apple users "worshippers" and "fanboys" while at the same time pretending Samsung's exploding phones are just a minor problem that people shouldn't make such a fuss about, on the same level as a touch display glitch.
Worshipping Samsung a little too much, perhaps?
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"more moderate"
Indeed.
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Only because people haven't yet died from exploding Note7s.
Given some of these incidents, they've just been lucky.
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Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair to Samsung, they acted quickly (for a large corporation) and did the right thing with an recall and then halting production. Compare to Apple, who typically deny the problem for a few years and then create a repair scheme for people who didn't already discard the device or pay to have the hardware fixed. Usually seems to require a class action lawsuit too.
Samsung aren't perfect by a long way, and I don't buy their hardware any more because of lack of features and their annoying Android skin, but compared to Apple... Well, you can't really compare them, can you? Apple knew about the bending problems, didn't do anything, denied warranty replacements and is now in denial about the inevitable failures resulting from repeated flexing a year down the line.
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To be fair to Apple, they've yet to have a phone routinely catch fire and/or explode on people. Compare to Samsung, who initially tried to ignore the fact that replacement phones from their recall were also exploding, and one of their employees accidentally sent an internal SMS to a person who was calling support to report his phone exploding with the following text:
"Just now got this. I can try and slow him down if we think it will matter, or we just let him do what he keeps threatening to do and see if h
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How quickly they forget. OK, it was an iPod rather than a phone, but they have had their issues.
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The primary level being it's *APPLE*?
I'm not saying the Note 7 situation is fine (it isn't even vaguely OK), just that Apple isn't perfect either. Google "exploding iPhone" if you don't want to take my word for it. Do feel free to report back.
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It required a lot of force to make it happen (Samsung phones were easier to bend but more flexible),
Sure. If you read all of the test results backwards.
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The most recent bending issue, resulting in touch disease, is not overblown. At the company I work at every iPhone 6+ has failed before 24 months. My wife's 6+ failed at 14 months and would not be covered by apple.
Hmm... I don't know if you are supposed to have it covered. Did you buy their extension plan? I'm just curious. Their website said they only warranty up to 1 year [apple.com]...
Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
It's totally legitimate to contrast the pooh-poohing of Samsung completely abandoning a flagship product over safety problems with how Slashdot would be reacting if this were Apple
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This has been occurring with every iPhone model since the iPhone 4 up to and including the iPhone 7, and Apple's stance is to blame the third-party USB chargers, completely ignoring the fact that all USB chargers do is provide 5VDC (or up to 9VDC for most QC chargers or higher for Class B QC 3.0 chargers) and it is up to the USB charger to cut off current to the battery pack when the target voltage is reached.
Apple loves to blame their users, third-party devices, or anything else that they can and Apple fan
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You should read the post "Level of disaster prevention" by DrYak ( 748999 ) Alter Relationship on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @09:53AM (#53054675). The person explained why it could be USB chargers. Apple provided a charger which has passed QC and approved by them that it won't cause the exceeding voltage (5V). They, however, do not guarantee if users want to use a charger manufactured by a third party to charge their phone. If users do, then Apple won't take responsibility. I think it is fair in this case.
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GM has managed to keep the problems with the locks on their cars under the radar for almost twenty years. People have died because of that and I don't know if it ever really got solved. So I wouldn't be so sure about Samsung being sued out of existence if they had acted otherwise. They are also rich enough to bribe the US government.
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When Apple screws up, there's a missing headphone jack.
When Samsung screws up, people's lives are at risk.
Same same, but different.
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As an owner of an iPhone 7 I can say that the claim that the adapter being output only is purely false. I have used the adapter with my existing headphones that have the mic, volume, and track controls without any problems.
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Pure FUD. The adapter they ship is bi-directional. An X-ray of the adapter [appleinsider.com] reveals both a DAC for audio output, and an ADC for input to the phone.
Go tell lies somewhere else, we're all stocked up here.
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Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
if they are unwilling to make a phone with user replaceable battery, serves them right. this could have been so much cheaper for them.
Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Moderating this as flamebait is silly. Having a user-replaceable battery is a desirable feature, at least for me.
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Moderating this as flamebait is silly. Having a user-replaceable battery is a desirable feature, at least for me.
Not quote. Whether it's a desirable feature or not for a few people is entirely separate for someone flaming a company for removing a feature that by en large nearly all people couldn't care less about.
It's even more flamebait given the history of Samsung and the justification to make the battery removable: "Hey boss. We totally need to make this phone more difficult to design with a user removable battery in case it explodes!" "How many phones have exploded so far?" "Zero" "How many phones have we shipped?
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Having a user-replaceable battery is a desirable feature, at least for me.
It's a desirable feature for anybody... except companies that change you $80 to replace your phone battery.
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Unless it was the charging circuitry that caused the explosions instead of the battery.
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I'm not certain as I haven't seen Samsung, or anyone else, release any failure analysis. But then I haven't been looking that hard.
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this could have been so much cheaper for them.
There's a huge assumption as to if this is even remotely relevant for a company that has shipped over $1bn phones.
Call it a minor operational expense and move on.
Re: Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Get some perspective man.
Samsung's phones are a health hazard. They could kill you.
Apples touch disease, though unnaceptable from a consumer point of view, falls squarely in the domain of "first world problems". They won't kill you. They won't harm you. They'll just cause you a slight annoyance (having to ask Apple for a replacement, which, depending on specifics, they might do for free).
Also, the instances of Apple devices catching fire are extremely rare, and are caused by mishandling the device (like, for example, using some crap charger).
Samsung's instances are caused by a defect that they themselves have already admitted existing. Though they haven't exactly clarified what they've fucked up, leaving people - such as yourself - a thin hope that it might just be a bad batch of batteries, totally ignoring that a) replacing the batteries didn't fix the problem and b) that there are only a handful of battery suppliers, and they supply everyone else.
A manufacturing defect on the batteriez would not just affect Samsung devices, they would affect everyone's devices.
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A manufacturing defect on the batteriez would not just affect Samsung devices, they would affect everyone's devices.
Batteries for devices are typically custom ordered and batch made. So no, it would not affect everyone's devices and that should be clear from pretty much every exploding device situation we have seen in the past 10 years as no one manufactures their own battery and each problem was related to the battery itself.
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Thank you!
Now I have a perfect example of what the term 'false equivalence' looks like.
Re:Dupe (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dupe (Score:5, Funny)
Please read before commenting.
Wow, you really must be new here.
Re:Wow, you really must be new here. (Score:2)
Yes. Yes I am.
Re:Dupe (Score:4, Interesting)
And yet the most recent bit of information on Samsung's own website is this release [samsung.com] which is the one quoted in the previous story. Their investor relations site doesn't contain any references [samsung.com] to a permanent end of production either.
So are these stories reporting new facts and Samsung just hasn't updated its websites yet, or are they misunderstanding the earlier release, inferring the word "permanent" when it wasn't in the original information?
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A simple google search would answer that for you.
http://mashable.com/2016/10/11... [mashable.com]
"The news comes via Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal, and the difference between yesterday's news is in the wording. On Monday, Samsung said it would "temporarily adjust" the production of the Galaxy Note7. Now, the company's move is permanent. "
Re:Many people have been physically injured? (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this possible if only 50 phone fires have been reported and the majority of those reports are unsubstantiated? Is this a new use of the word "many" that I have been unaware of? Does the word "many" mean "extremely few compared to the number of sold phones" in this context?
I think "many" can legitimately mean "more than one single freak accident" in the context of an exploding consumer device.
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Even if the reports are un-substantiated, at this point, it's bad press for the Note 7.
They're making the right move by retiring the SKU before it tarnishes Samsung's reputation further.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Who are you accusing of hating here? The Wall Street Journal for publishing this article? Samsung for discontinuing the model? Or maybe msmash for submitting the story here?
Is this not a newsworthy topic? Is this not a current red-hot issue in the tech world? Is this not news for nerds?
How is it that you think that this is a political issue, or one driven by hate? Do you think that we should meekly accept phones that explode on us? You accuse others of being fanbois, but I can't think of any excuse to wanting us to remain silent on this issue other than you being a fanboi yourself.
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fanboi: (n) One who uses the word "fanboi."
Re:cool link (Score:5, Interesting)
Editor's note: Submitters and editors should note that it is best to open a private browsing window and manually remove session ID gobblegook from URL to test a link. Greetz BugMeNot, works sometimes.
For small pocket devices WE HAVE EXCEEDED PEAK LI-ON BATTERY AREA and especially LENGTH. Samsung should retool the G7 to contain two or three smaller 'proven' Lion battery packages with separate charging circuits. It is possible that a manufacturing variance ultimately related to area is fooling the charge circuit and making these more susceptible to overcharge. There is also physical stress, another trigger. Batteries should not straddle the middle of the device where the most butt-pocket deformation will occur.
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I don't believe that this is anything to do with the physical size of the cells; tablets and laptops have much bigger cells. This is more likely a new anode material - to provide a higher energy density - that maybe wasn't completely understood before it was shipped. If you don't understand it, you can't keep it safe. The issues could also be related to hotspots on the battery, where circuitry close to one point on the cell causes non-uniform heating - you then see a catastrophic failure even though the bat
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They do, but Apple blames third-party chargers.
Nevermind that all they do is provide 5V over a USB port and it is up to the USB device to actually monitor the cells and cut off current when the target voltage is reached.
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They do, but Apple blames third-party chargers. Nevermind that all they do is provide 5V over a USB port and it is up to the USB device to actually monitor the cells and cut off current when the target voltage is reached.
You would think so; but my iPhone's (third-party) Car Charger gets my phone HOT during charging, but the phone's Apple "cube" charger does not. So obviously, the charger itself IS part of the equation.
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That's because rather than regulating the charge current inside the phone like they're supposed to, they rely on the external charger being sufficiently wimpy to have a voltage sag.
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That's because rather than regulating the charge current inside the phone like they're supposed to, they rely on the external charger being sufficiently wimpy to have a voltage sag.
Do you know that for a fact? I wouldn't think that it would be good design practice to do that.
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It's the most plausible explanation given the stated facts.
It's OK-ish as long as they take the thermals into account and the device won't heat dangerously. If the heat is a real danger, they should use a different regulator that chops the input rather than "burning it off".
To know for sure, the charger should be placed under load and the voltage drop measured. But it would have to be WAY off spec to cause a heating problem that noticeable.
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I wouldn't think that it would be good design practice to do that.
Actually, it's an excellent design if the design is intended to force people to only buy overpriced Apple-certified chargers.
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I wouldn't think that it would be good design practice to do that.
Actually, it's an excellent design if the design is intended to force people to only buy overpriced Apple-certified chargers.
And to think I "friended" you...
People use non-Apple chargers all the time without incident. Perhaps Apple just makes more robust batteries than the POS garbage Samsung put in the GN7.
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You have it backwards. When the USB charger voltage droops, the phone (or other recharging device) will dissipate more heat as the phone's charging process becomes less efficient. Apple's USB chargers generally don't sag like some cheap equivalents do.
It's easy to monitor this using simple and cheap USB tools like this one which report both voltage and current:
https://www.amazon.com/PortaPo... [amazon.com]
(or many other equivalents)
Charge control is done within the phone, generally by a dedicated chip which also monit
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Now only if you could depend on cheap shitty chargers to actually only provide 5VDC as advertised.
I had one that fried my Raspberry Pi model B, I tested it with a multimeter and it was putting out 8.6VDC.
News flash: shitty unregulated garbage is shitty, and garbage.
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Yep, it's all a big nationalist conspiracy to drop the hammer on the big evil Korean megacorporation in favor of the local megacorporation instead. Yes, that was sarcasm.
You sound like a moron. That bit was not sarcasm.
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You do that before you start trying to blow people up.
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All phone manufacturers should wake up and realize they could have easily run into the same issue from their battery supplier.
Going back to removable batteries would reduce the risk of such a costly recall and give consumers what they want.
Do many customers really *want* removable batteries? Sure, some do, but overall, there doesn't seem to be much demand for them given the popularity of phones without easily replaced batteries.