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Hardware

US Issues Emergency Ban On Flying With Samsung Galaxy Note 7, Offenders May Face Criminal Prosecution (transportation.gov) 103

Posted by msmash from the phone-on-fire dept.
Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphone will be banned from aircraft in the United States starting at noon EDT (1600 GMT) under an emergency order, regulators said on Friday. Among other penalties, those who attempt to circumvent the ban could be subjected to criminal prosecutions, the regulators added. Quartz reports: On Friday (Oct. 14), US Department of Transportation announced that passengers would no longer be able to bring the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 onto any flight in the United States. There have been nearly 100 reported cases of the phones catching on fire and spewing noxious black smoke, an undesired situation in an airplane's enclosed cabin. "Individuals who own or possess a Samsung Galaxy Note7 device may not transport the device on their person, in carry-on baggage, or in checked baggage on flights to, from, or within the United States," the US DOT statement said. Any travelers who violate the ban could be subject to criminal prosecution and fines. Samsung is expected to see a $5.3 billion loss in profits from the entire fiasco, mainly the cost of recalling, stopping production, and destroying phones.Samsung said it will send a text message to all Note 7 users to let them know about this ban.
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US Issues Emergency Ban On Flying With Samsung Galaxy Note 7, Offenders May Face Criminal Prosecution More

US Issues Emergency Ban On Flying With Samsung Galaxy Note 7, Offenders May Face Criminal Prosecution

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  • how many dumb-a$$es will just drop them in their checked bags instead?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by war4peace ( 1628283 )

      The ban on carrying phones in checked bags is in TFS. I expected the good ol' Slashdotter to not read TFA but really, not even TFS properly?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Striek ( 1811980 )

        Sure, they've been banned in baggage as well - but will that actually stop people from dropping them in there and hoping to get away with it?

        Not all of them, I'd bet.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tsqr ( 808554 )

          Sure, they've been banned in baggage as well - but will that actually stop people from dropping them in there and hoping to get away with it?

          Not all of them, I'd bet.

          What are suggesting? Guns aren't allowed in carry-on, but people still put guns in carry-on. Things that are illegal are against the law, but some people still break the law.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by I4ko ( 695382 )
      Considering the number of people having their phones on and out of airplane mode during my flights yesterday, texting and skyping and whatsapping and facebooking, there are at lest 10 heads per flight in a oversold economy cabin of a 737 that will do it.

  • WTF (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm starting to think this was some kind of industrial espionage/cyberwarfare.

    • Re: WTF (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yea, that is so much more realistic than just an engineering cock-up.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      At some point this could have been an object lesson in the risks of carelessly handling lithium batteries, a lesson that should have been learned when those Boeing Dreamliners caught on fire. Rapidly charging and overcharging these batteries is a bad idea, all of the engineers know this.

      It is a shame that Koreans made themselves vulnerable to this problem. Now everyone is dogpiling on Samsung, and it seems pretty obvious that some parties are only joining in because it is a great opportunity to take down th

      • At some point this could have been an object lesson in the risks of carelessly handling lithium batteries, a lesson that should have been learned when those Boeing Dreamliners caught on fire. Rapidly charging and overcharging these batteries is a bad idea, all of the engineers know this.

        But apparently, Samsung's engineers are subject to (IMHO) Korea's overly-hierarchical society (remember the Korean Airlines plane that drove into the runway, because the co-Pilot WOULDN'T countermand the Pilot's incorrect flying), and thus were silent when their bosses made them attempt to charge their nearly 4,000 mAh battery in the same time as the iPhone's 2,000 mAh one (seriously overheating and permanently-damaging the battery), rather than admit that their Piece of SHIT, battery-hog design (that, desp

  • Who still has a note 7 still? When they started catching fire and exploding and samsung started to offer a full refund who thinks na I'm good.

    • As a Note 7 owner, most of us got the v2 "fixed" version (which wasn't quite fixed it turns out). Pretty much everything on the market is a fairly significant downgrade if you're a power user, so if you got a Note 7, you'd want a Note 7 to replace it. CPSC just flipped the switch on the v2 phones yesterday so there are still a good number of Note 7s in circulation. It takes time to manufacture, prep, ship special boxes for shipping damaged lithium batteries, and then have the users return ship them for dis

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        The underlying corrupt reality of course, just because the phones where recalled, does not mean they will be destroyed and plenty of corrupt individuals will be stealing those worthless phones in the return chain to sell second hand. Samsung needs to tighten up security or those phones will continue to burn their reputation for years to come.

      • Pretty much everything on the market is a fairly significant downgrade

        The iPhone 7 mops the floor with the S7 series, performance-wise, doesn't catch on fire in droves, and gets almost the same battery-life with half the battery capacity.

        I don't think that's a downgrade. Quite the opposite in fact.

        Maybe that's why a significant percentage of S7 users are switching to the iPhone 7. In fact, some statistics show that the iPhone 7 (rather than another Samsung, or other Android phone) is leading the pack when it comes to what former S7 users are turning-to as an alternative.

  • Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tsqr ( 808554 ) on Friday October 14, 2016 @04:23PM (#53078287)

    Samsung said it will send a text message to all Note 7 users to let them know about this ban.

    Well, that should be effective, seeing as how Samsung has told all Note 7 users to power off their phones.

    This is reminiscent of IT departments that send out emails to users to tell them that the mail server is down.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Makes perfect sense to me.....

      Since there are two groups of people out there at this moment.

      Group A)
      People that have discontinued use of or exchanged their effected phones. For those people the text doesn't mean anything but they also won't be receiving it as noted they are no longer using and or in possession of the effected hardware.

      And then you have Group B)
      People who are still using the effected phones in spite of the recall. Those people would be effected by the ban and those people will receive the te

    • "Well, that should be effective, seeing as how Samsung has told all Note 7 users to power off their phones."

      Clearly they would be going without any phone at all, left incommunicado forever.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tsqr ( 808554 )

        "Well, that should be effective, seeing as how Samsung has told all Note 7 users to power off their phones."

        Clearly they would be going without any phone at all, left incommunicado forever.

        I don't know why this even has to be explained. Samsung advised Note 7 owners to shut off their phones more than a week ago; even the supposedly good replacement ones that turned out to not be good. This was widely reported on TV, in print media, and on countless websites, and has been the subject of countless 'water cooler' discussions. Only cave-dwelling hermits could be unaware, and they probably don't have network coverage, so they can't receive the text. If they have turned off their phones, they won't

        • "If they have turned off their phones, they won't receive the text. "

          They would get the text on the phone they are using now.

  • Are you sure about the date and time? Yesterday (10/13) I took two US flights and before both there was an announcement that none of these phones were to be used on the flight.

  • They should restrict all cell phones (Score:3)

    by mysidia ( 191772 ) on Friday October 14, 2016 @04:40PM (#53078395)

    And just establish a rule going forward, because SamSung is just the latest $flavor_of_the_year issue with lithium batteries.

    Example: To bring any cell phone Or Non-TSA-certified laptop or electronic device aboard any plane, you must remove the battery and place the battery in a
    poly container which you will purchase before security, and the gate attendant will seal and lock before you can board
    the plane, where the battery will remain for the duration of the flight.

    Any cell phone with a Non-removable Lithium-polymer or Lithium-ION battery may not be brought on-board;
    for $100 you may purchase a larger sealed fireproof, smokeproof container to put the phone in which may then go into checked luggage, if it's not a Samsung Galaxy 7.

    • and apple will be forced to have ones that you can take out.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        and apple will be forced to have ones that you can take out.

        You found the hidden reason for my rec' that phones with non-removable batteries not be allowed on planes.

        Pit two unreasonable organizations against each other.

        It would be glorious to see Apple cause the public to finally have had enough of government overreach OR
        for iPhone users to finally get phones with removable batteries; Either way, the public wins (Although travelers
        may be considerably inconvenienced for a short period, before the result

    • Nah just put it in a clear plastic bag. That renders everything safe.

  • Honestly, this ban should be extended to all consumer grade devices that have non-removable batteries. Simply put, if your battery cannot be removed from the device, the safety of your device is strictly based on software. Consumer grade software has been known to fail in horrible ways.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Striek ( 1811980 )

      Mod parent up.

      I won't buy phones with nonremovable batteries primarily because I can never be sure that the phone is off when I want it to be. Until this story broke, I'd never considered it a safety issue.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jours ( 663228 )

      Simply put, if your battery cannot be removed from the device, the safety of your device is strictly based on software.

      To be fair, the safety of your airplane is strictly based on software as well.

      • that's true but industrial grade code is actually has standards. with consumer electronics, anything goes.

        • For example, parent is consumer grade prose. It comes with an extra "is" and perhaps some other problems I've missed. The procedure manual for operating an airliner is probably up to some sort of editorial standard also. The airlines paid for that. You paid nothing for our prose, and you got what is you paid for.

          • It's all in lowercase, because he thinks that's "edgy" or something.

            • Which is still preferable to the opposing camp, who use:

              ***Important Notice***
              Pedantic people may wish to avoid reading the following as is contains:
              a. Grammatical errors
              b. No punctuation
              c. Misspellings
              We wouldn't wish to be responsible for your next anal panic attack.
              ***We now return you to your regularly scheduled post***

              ALL FUCKING CAPS ALL THE TIME WITH NO PUNCTUATION EXCEPT !!!!!! CAUSE THERE IDEAS IS MORE IMPOTENT THAN YERS!!!!!

            • Nah, I use all lowercase most of the time because my left shift used to get stuck all the time. It's just a bad habit now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by brunes69 ( 86786 )

      I don't know if this is supposed to be a joke, but such a plan would never, ever happen, for a plethora of reasons - not the least of which is that many major airlines use iPads as Infotainment devices *on the flight itself*, and pilots and attendants also routinely use tablets. Flight manuals nowadays are all on tablets. Passenger lists, all moving to tablets.

      I won't even get into the amount of calls to congresscritters that would happen if you tried to tell the global business community they could no long

  • of a G7 user that just sat down on the seat but before plane is pushed off, and reading this article (unless TSA has a "amber alert" system to send out notices of newly banned items). I'm curious of kind of expression on their face.

  • "Samsung is expected to see a $5.3 billion loss in profits from the entire fiasco"

    $5 billion here, $5 billion there... pretty soon it adds up to real money.

  • Banned .... (Score:3)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Friday October 14, 2016 @05:44PM (#53078701)

    ... from 787s.

    Oh, the irony!

  • But (Score:2)

    by rossdee ( 243626 )

    won't TSA screeners just confiscate Note7 phones (along with nail scissors and family sized toothpaste etc)

  • Phones don't kill people, their stupid lack of impulse control while crossing the road does.

  • That God the government is protecting us from this threat that almost killed us all.

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