Samsung To Reveal This Month What Caused the Galaxy Note 7 Smartphone To Catch Fire - Report (reuters.com) 131
One of the biggest mysteries of 2016 will come to an end sometime this month. Samsung will make public the results of its months-long investigation into what caused several Galaxy Note 7 smartphones to turn into flames later this month, according to a report on Reuters. From the report: The South Korean firm said in October it was examining all aspects of the phone, suggesting there may be a combination of factors that contributed to one of the costliest product safety failures in tech history. Samsung has also previously noted that it was working with several third-party sources and experts to figure out what could have caused the error. A popular theory among many is that Samsung attempted to further slim the form factor of the Galaxy Note 7, which resulted in the battery to be held too tightly within the device -- which in turn, caused the layers of lithium cobalt oxide and graphite to touch.
This month? (Score:2, Funny)
This month? You mean they're still catching fire? I thought they deactivated the last of them in 2016.
Did someone set us up the bomb?
Re:This month? (Score:4, Funny)
Did someone set us up the bomb?
That's a common misconception, but what happen is someone set up us the bomb.
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You have no chance to survive make your time
Re: This month? (Score:1)
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Oddly, there's people even around this site that refuse to exchange them for a phone that won't burst into flames, to the point of circumventing the measures being put in place by Samsung and their partner carriers.
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Re:This month? (Score:4, Insightful)
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No need to get nasty; the original headline was poorly phrased. This is a pretty common problem with headlines. For example, "17 Remain Dead in Morgue Shooting Spree", and "Dead Body Found in Cemetary", and "One-armed Man Applauds Kindness of Strangers".
This is the proper way to fix the original headline: Samsung To Reveal This Month What Caused the Galaxy Note 7 To Catch Fire
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Even better.
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What I find even funnier is the use of font that don't let you tell the difference between a capital "I", the number one, and a lowercase "ell". "John Paul II III" - I actually saw this as the headline on a local newspaper's front page.
John Pau One Two Three, the once & future Pope
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Because John Paul George Ringo
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That's mostly because A. Apple's marketing people managed to trick everybody into believing that sans serif fonts are more "readable" despite mounds of evidence to the contrary, B. they picked the ghastly Helvetica (and Arial, its derivative) despite its particularly heinous kerning and indistinct letter shapes, and C. everybody else followed their lead.
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I was able to easily configure firefox, eclipse, and jedit to use monospace fonts with small-caps,
Wait, you mean you use small capitals instead of lowercase? That's snazzy for book titles and letterhead, but don't you find that the change in word shapes interferes with pattern recognition that permits line-at-a-time reading?
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I was able to easily configure firefox, eclipse, and jedit to use monospace fonts with small-caps,
Wait, you mean you use small capitals instead of lowercase? That's snazzy for book titles and letterhead, but don't you find that the change in word shapes interferes with pattern recognition that permits line-at-a-time reading?
Wrong. Pattern recognition is improved, since you no longer have to distinquish between a lowercase ell and the number 1, a lowercase r + n and a lowercase m, It also means that every uppercase letter is higher than any lowercase letter, and that there are no descenders. Dyslexics will also appreciate not having as much of a problem with lowercase b and d, for example.
Kerning is a "feature" that originally was used to save $$$. Letters that took up less horizontal space cost less to typecast. They also t
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Pattern recognition is improved, since you no longer have to distinquish between a lowercase ell and the number 1, a lowercase r + n and a lowercase m, It also means that every uppercase letter is higher than any lowercase letter,
OK, so use Serif fonts.
and that there are no descenders.
That's a bug, not a feature.
Kerning is a "feature" that originally was used to save $$$.
Citation needed.
Letters that took up less horizontal space cost less to typecast.
The "kern" is the part of the type that hangs over the block. It doesn't cost more, because it doesn't use more metal. And it scarcely matters anyway, because lead is cheap AF.
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Serif fonts by themselves don't solve the problem. I've actually tested various "solutions", and serif fonts by themselves are not as good as serif small-caps monospace.
Descenders are a waste of vertical space, requiring all lines to have extra space just to accommodate the few letters that require descenders. There's a reason why there are no descenders in upper-case letters (and we really should travel back in time and take the people who invented both lowercase letters and "handwriting script" and shoo
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Descenders are a waste of vertical space, requiring all lines to have extra space just to accommodate the few letters that require descenders.
That space is already necessary for legibility.
There's a reason why there are no descenders in upper-case letters
Yes. They hadn't been invented [creativepro.com] yet when those glyphs were invented. Again, they are a feature, not a bug.
and we really should travel back in time and take the people who invented both lowercase letters and "handwriting script" and shoot their great-grandparents - ask any pharmacist who's had to decipher a prescription
No. Just shoot the doctors who can't be arsed to write legibly. They're literally killing people.
Also, lead is toxic - and you miss my point
When you develop the ability to stay on topic, let me know.
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Descenders mean you need MORE space for LESS legibility. Try it. I developed what was at the time the ultimate variable-space microfont back in the'80s (just for personal curiosity - I don't know if "microfont" was even a term then) and it was 5px high with 1px between lines. Descenders would have made that impossible. Why not try it instead of bitching all the time about how it's not possible or it doesn't make sense or whatever.
I just wanted to see how much info could be put on a standard screen - it's
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Problem is, it often doesn't work when css sheets specify !important font overrides. CSS breaks the original premise of html - separation of content and presentation. It's part of what makes the web so defective by design nowadays. Same as dynamic content manipulation by javascript.
If you want an application, make one - don't bastardize the browser to act like one.
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That fixes this one incident of a piss-poor headline.
The real fix is to get an editor that isn't an idiot.
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Whatever you say, AC, but I wasn't replying to her.
My guess (Score:3)
An unexpected surplus of oxidation.
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Bad O-rings let propellant out.
Re: My guess (Score:1)
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On the chance that your post (I do get the humor), was meant to reference the Challenger, it wasn't the O-rings being "bad", it was a criminally negligent managerial decision making system that approved & allowed a launch in conditions they KNEW should have been unacceptable. It was human error. Blaming the O-rings is like blaming the steel for the 9-11 towers collapsing. They did what they were designed to do, but they were exposed to conditions (low temperatures) in which they had a high probability o
O-rings (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not convinced they actually know what caused it, nor that they're capable of understanding it. After all, they already claimed to have solved it once, but their understanding proved faulty. What's certain is that the public and the authorities need a good plausible explanation (whether true or not) so they can feel safe and begin to trust Samsung again.
They Don't Know? (Score:5, Insightful)
If Samsung didn't know from their internal engineers within 2 weeks of the problem, they have a shitty engineering/QC organization.
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It was a quite rare problem, obviously frequent enough to warrant the recall, but uncommon enough to not be caught in QC. To be sure of the cause of the problem (rather than guessing like they did for the first recall) they may well have needed to make a number of slightly modified phones to determine which factors were the cause as given the infrequent failure rate trying to monitor one failing is likely to be impractical.
It certainly would be wise to reserve judgement on whether their engineering or QC sh
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I'll be respectful here. Given the decade plus experience with Lithium-Ion and the numbers of manufacturers of cells and components and the engineering literature,
I find it difficult to believe that other companies had not identified a fault that only Samsung found after about a dozen years of high volume use of these batteries.
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Funny story. A company I used to work for back ~10 years ago, had multiple failures across machines(heavy industry) where the PLC would wipe. Wasn't caught in engineering, wasn't caught in QC. The problem went on for months, the only solution in the short term was to send out new eeprom modules when it happened(expedited overnight). The problem ended up being a design/part issue, where in certain power-down cycles, the primary relay would backfeed. Ended up having to dump the company that made the rela
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The fires in the "fixed" Note 7s (which used a battery from an established Chinese manufacturer) were a bit of a surprise. Bu
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It was not random chance. There were several incidences where the replacements also burned up, and even if Samsung shipped a million, that's still a lot higher than other smartp
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Because I'm sure when Samsung started their battery group, they picked a bunch of random people and sent them to "Battery School". Once they graduated, they immediately started creating the batteries for the Note 7.
Or maybe they hired engineers from other companies and institutions that actually had experience in battery design.
Also, when the second rev of the phone began failing, I'm sure they pulled the whole product and created a massive PR fiasco because they just felt like giving up, and not because p
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If Samsung didn't know from their internal engineers within 2 weeks of the problem, they have a shitty engineering/QC organization.
If you rush to do a RCFA on a failure that caused this kind of loss to a business then you have a very shitty engineering / QC organisation.
Engineers love jumping to conclusions. It's amazing the number of times they get it wrong, don't find the true underlying cause, or don't find very valuable leanings in the process. The fact that they haven't answered this question yet shows they have a far more serious engineering / QC organisation than you will ever know.
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When catastrophic failures of this type occur, the evidence left is typically a pile of ash and molten metal. It's difficult if not impossible to determine root cause of such a failure.
They may be inductively thinking and producing a similar failure by applying force to the battery, causing it to fail in a similar manner. However, I'm doubtful that they can determine with certainty what caused a pile of ash/molten metal to have failed.
HCF Error? (Score:2, Insightful)
"Samsung has also previously noted that it was working with several third-party sources and experts to figure out what could have caused the error"
Overheating and bursting into flames is hardly an "error."
Studying the situation is a good thing. (Score:1)
I don't understand (Score:5, Interesting)
What's up with this 'thinner' obsession?
Everybody I know uses either a fat battery-cover to have more power or an armored cover to protect the slim phones.
And as for tablets, I prefer the fat toddler-covers which allow a much more relaxed grip on these ultra-thin tablets.
Re:I don't understand (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, let's separate out utility value from design value. A thinner phone is somewhat more convenient all things being equal, but thing's aren't equal. We're obviously at the point where many consumers would prefer a marginal improvement in robustness over a marginal reduction in thinness.
But you've got to get people to buy the thing, and part of that is to make them say, "Wow this is new," when they hold the device. It doesn't take a lot of creativity to make them say that by making the phone thinner than the one they currently carry. You must make it thinner than the last generation of phones. So the usefulness of more thinness isn't for the user, it's for the salesman.
Re:I don't understand (Score:4, Interesting)
All things being equal, thinner isn't better (on electronics, lets make sure we're all on the same page here). As nospam points out, the new iPads are so frigging thin and slippery that they are hard to hold. They look nice just siting there but they're a PITA to use. Maybe they really are like people. Although it's nice to think of them naked, the real world goes a lot more smoothly if they are covered with something.
Somebody really has issues and it ain't us.
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Phones and tablets are held differently so "too thin" is a totally different question in either case. A tablet you hold in across its thickness; a phone you grasp across its width. If there were a fad for narrow phones there are only so narrow you can make them. But you can keep making phones thinner until you have to worry about paper cuts. It's just not that marginally useful.
Now I suppose if you wear tight Italian suits you might appreciate another mm off a phone's thickness; but for most of us "thinne
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As nospam points out, the new iPads are so frigging thin and slippery that they are hard to hold.
Thin does not make something slippery or hard to hold. I have no problem holding a sheet of paper or a 0.5mm sheet of stainless. Thinner is not the problem here, stupid frigging brushed magnesium that looks good but is not functional is the problem. I can more easily hold my thinner Galaxy S5 than most of the thicker phones on the market due to the material used on the back cover.
Thinner would still be better. Always better providing the phone is sturdy enough not to bend and doesn't have a stupid design me
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A thinner phone is somewhat more convenient all things being equal, but thing's aren't equal. We're obviously at the point where many consumers would prefer a marginal improvement in robustness over a marginal reduction in thinness.
"Many consumers" does not equal "Apple customers". That, right there, is the fundamental problem. Apple customers want thinness at all costs. And so many companies, like Samsung, are sooo jealous and envious of Apple's cultist customer base that they somehow think that they ca
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"Many consumers" does not equal "Apple customers". That, right there, is the fundamental problem. Apple customers want thinness at all costs. And so many companies, like Samsung, are sooo jealous and envious of Apple's cultist customer base that they somehow think that they can replicate this level of success by copying Apple's impractical and user-hostile design decisions.
I see too many people sporting iPhones in bulky protective cases every day to believe even Apple customers actually want thinner phones.
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"Many consumers" does not equal "Apple customers". That, right there, is the fundamental problem. Apple customers want thinness at all costs. And so many companies, like Samsung, are sooo jealous and envious of Apple's cultist customer base that they somehow think that they can replicate this level of success by copying Apple's impractical and user-hostile design decisions.
I see too many people sporting iPhones in bulky protective cases every day to believe even Apple customers actually want thinner phones.
I didn't put mine in a bulky case for its protective properties. I put it in a case so I could hold it without dropping it. The shiny rounded edges are slippery and significantly more difficult to hold securely while juggling other things. A Thule X3 case has nice, easy to grip sides. So that's what I put on it.
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"Many consumers" does not equal "Apple customers". That, right there, is the fundamental problem. Apple customers want thinness at all costs. And so many companies, like Samsung, are sooo jealous and envious of Apple's cultist customer base that they somehow think that they can replicate this level of success by copying Apple's impractical and user-hostile design decisions.
So this is why Apple decided to build the SE, which is a short, fat 5S that needs no case to be usable. Maybe Apple knows what their customers want better than you and Samsung. Just a thought.
I offer an anecdote: I have a 5S, bought the year it came out. It's a 3 year old phone now. I find the 6 and beyond to be obscenely, grotesquely big and thin. While a recent visit to the Fruit Cart (apple store) so a friend could get his 6s+'s face sensor looked at I chatted up an employee. I told him how much I li
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> Apple customers want thinness at all costs.
Way to go with the unsupportable generalizations.
I'm an Apple customer and I want a phone that it robust and has long battery life and I'm entirely happy to compromise on thinness.
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Yet you happily continue to buy Apple products, instead of putting your money where your mouth is and going for a different brand.
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Yet you happily continue to buy Apple products, instead of putting your money where your mouth is and going for a different brand.
Is making up random assumptions about people you don't know healthy?
I've owned plenty of Android phones. I have an iPhone right now because I wanted to try it out. I don't see other manufacturers compromising on thinness either.
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"Many consumers" does not equal "Apple customers". That, right there, is the fundamental problem. Apple customers want thinness at all costs.
No they don't. Go on the MacRurmors forums and people there are actually clamoring for a thicker phone, because they hate the bump that the camera unit causes on the back of the device, not allowing it to sit flat on a surface. I personally don't see why that would be such an issue (since they're likely to have a case on the back that prevents the camera from touching the surface anyway). They also want more durability after the iPhone 6 "bendgate" and more battery, along with thinner bezels on the device.
T
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No, the issue is that all those morons on MacRumors and elsewhere gripe and complain, but then run out and spend tons of money on the latest Apple iGadget anyway, despite all their bitching and complaining.
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Oh, BS.
Apple customers want whatever Apple execs tell them to want. Apple tells them "thin is in!" and Apple customers believe that thinness is the most important thing ever. Even Apple fans here on Slashdot will go to great lengths to convince us how important thinness is; I've seen it myself.
No, Apple customers would not be willing to sacrifice thinness for anything, unless of course Apple suddenly changes their tune and tells them that thinness isn't that important and replaceable batteries and headpho
There's a reason Apple is successful... (Score:2)
and it's not because they've somehow managed to trick hundreds of millions of people into buying something they don't want. Or that they've hypnotized their customers into wanting whatever Apple happens to make.
Apple is successful because they make what their customers want and their customers have lots of money--it's that simple. It's pretty much the same formula that every other company that's ever been successful has followed.
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No, this is total bullshit. Apple is the company that refused to make big-screen phones, and their customers defended this, until suddenly they changed and made big-screen phones, and suddenly all their stupid cultist customers defended this even though just before they were defending Apple's eschewing of big-screen phones.
Apple is successful because their customers are cultists who will buy whatever Apple makes. They're just like many other massively overpriced luxury brands like Coach and Bentley, who l
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Apple customers want whatever Apple execs tell them to want.
That might be true of some Apple customers, but I can tell you that I'm an Apple customer, and I assure you that I chose iPhone over Android because, based on my research, I think iPhone has a better security, reliability, and longevity story. When I'm ready to upgrade, I'll reevaluate the smartphone landscape again.
Apple tells them "thin is in!" and Apple customers believe that thinness is the most important thing ever.
Actually, one of the reasons I bought an OtterBox for my iPhone was to fatten it up and make it easier to hold. The other reason being, of course, protection, since the phone was pretty expensiv
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Then you aren't looking for it.
Hello, I'm an Apple customer. I am typing this on a 2014 MacBook Pro. I carry an iPhone.
My next laptop will not be an Apple, because they are going out of their way to make products that are incompatible with my previous purchases (LED Cinema Display, countless USB products). Why can't I get a 12" or 13" notebook with discrete graphics? I don't even want the discrete graphics necessarily inside the notebook - isn't that kind of the point of Thunderbolt? Yet, Apple goes ou
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Hey, I never said that every single Apple customer is the same. Obviously, with tens (or even hundreds) of millions of customers over the company's existence, there's going to be some variety. I've even bought a couple of their devices, way back when I was married, mainly because my wife wanted them (an iPod nano and an iPhone 3GS), so I do have some personal experience, though it was years ago, but it did give me a big distaste for how bad their products are for interoperability and after Android phones
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Actually, no. The most convenient design is the one that doesn't slip out of your hands easily and break. Excessive thinness is actually a big contributing factor to the use of cases. The thinner the phones have gotten, the more people have used cases. I used my original iPhone without a case for much of its life and never came close to dropping it. I tried to use my iPhone 5 without a case after the holster broke, and I nearly drop
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The thinner the device in the chunky case the thinner the whole assembly is too. Imagine attaching those protective cases to brick-like phones. Not the same, is it? In the past the brick was the phone. Now the brick is made up of all that padding you attach to it to keep it safe. If they can make some progress regarding the padding, to make it thinner yet as efficient, then you get some sweet pocket padding device.
Re:I don't understand (Score:5, Funny)
What's up with this 'thinner' obsession?
one year at CES, there was an angry gypsy that whispered "thinner" into the microphone and all our electronics have been suffering ever since. ;)
Why wait? (Score:2)
Does anybody have any idea outside of a hidden agenda that is *NOT* in the general public's best interests why they would wait to reveal this information if they have already found out what was causing it?
As near or far as I can figure, if they know the cause already, they should publicly release a statement right away which explains it, apologize profusely for what happened, and clarify that they are taking measures to ensure that it doesn't happen in the future. Full stop. Move on, instead of dwellin
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Three ways I see to look at. One is they found the likely cause but want to avoid getting egg on face if it turns out they missed something. Given that they already had a double recall they probably don't want to create the appearance that they are clueless.
The second way I could see it is by pronouncing they can show down third parties releasing their own investigations and could also time when the news got released. Given that CES is this month that can be used one of two ways, either release when press i
Good to note.. heh (Score:4, Informative)
"A popular theory among many is that Samsung attempted to further slim the form factor of the Galaxy Note 7"
This popular theory came from a private company that disassembled a single unit and came up with the speculation just to promote their own company, yet it has been spread by the tech press irresponsibly as a specialist opinnion.
Though the theory is plausible, it has no substance. So it' s a good thing that an official statement will be coming out soon.
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disassembled a single unit and came up with the speculation just to promote their own company
Bellingcat will sue for stealing their business method. They will also lose because Bellingcat doesn't even bother disassembling even a single unit, they just make shit up at a bar one night then publish it.
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You forgot that this private company was staffed entirely by software engineers and project managers and didn't have even the slightest hint of any experience or knowledge of hardware design.
The only explanation (Score:1)
Let's see - they set themselves on fire, are banned from planes... Yep, Samsung must've declared a jihad against Apple.
They know how to keep the flame alive (Score:2)
Easy one! (Score:2)
It was the battery! Nothing to see here, move along...
it's a phone! a mini-tablet! survival lighter! (Score:3)
only problem is, they didn't put the "light forest on fire as signal" command in the manual. next time....
update (Score:3)
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crappy Asian engineering standards
By all means why don't you come up with some better engineering at that price point. But hey it's easier to simply sit on a forum and shit on another company who are engineering frigging miracles in miniaturisation.
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I'm American so instead I think I'll do it at a REASONABLE AND REALISTIC price point.
Yeah but no one buys reasonable and realistic. You can see that quite clearly in the rise of cheap shit from China.
I wonder if they'll reveal why a glass back? (Score:3)
Fortunately, the phone was already recalled. Who's stupid enough to make a handheld computer with a glass back?
https://twitter.com/PerfectReign/status/778987256652587008
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>Who's stupid enough to make a handheld computer with a glass back?
Like the Nexus 4?
That was a crap phone. The 5 was great. The 4 was their practice run.
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My understanding is that the glass back helps to improve radio reception [forbes.com]. It's apparently a significant problem for the newer all-aluminum phone designs. The aluminum blocks reception, and there are various ways of coping with it, typically by compromising the solid aluminum back with other materials.
Re: I wonder if they'll reveal why a glass back? (Score:2)
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I have an HTC One M7 myself. Notice that, in fact, it's not a seamless metal back. There are small plastic strips that cut across the top and bottom, and the sides are plastic as well. I'd presume that's not an aesthetic choice, but for reception purposes.
I've always gotten good reception with that phone, so I do wonder what the advantage of the glass panel is over the HTC's segmented design. Maybe they patented it? Who knows.
I HATE APPLE (Score:2)
And their starting this whole "slimmer = better" race.
1. Slimmer phones are harder to hold, and almost impossible to hold with your shoulder when you just need both hands for a moment.
2. Slimmer phones have smaller batteries and less battery life.
3. Slimmer phones push phone makers to go with fixed batteries and to remove SD slots.
***
What I want....
A thicker phone...with a large removable battery. And if you really want to make me happy, give me three mico-SD card slots and a RAID option. And guess what,
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By God, you're right! A mobile phone is not entirely unlike a nuclear power plant at all!
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Exactly.
If they know they will have an answer in the future, they know now.
If not, they don't know what caused the problem and they're essentially "playing poker" and bluffing.