Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones to stop using or exchange the devices

[reno]

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Samsung Electronics said Tuesday that it is ending production of Galaxy Note 7 smartphones permanently, a day after it halted global sales of the star-crossed devices.
The South Korean company said in a regulatory filing that it decided to stop manufacturing Note 7s for the sake of consumer safety.


Samsung is struggling to regain consumer trust after a first round of recalls that prompted criticism both for the faulty devices and for the company's handling of the problem.

After the earlier recall, the company said it had identified a manufacturing defect in the batteries of its top-of-the-line smartphone.

It started shipping new Note 7 phones that were supposed to be safer. But reports that even the replacements were catching fire led Samsung to announce it was stopping sales of the devices.

Authorities in the U.S. and South Korea are still investigating why even the replacement Note 7 phones that Samsung equipped with a safer battery are catching fire. An official at the South Korean safety agency said the replacement phones may have a defect that is different from the problem with the original Note 7s.

Meanwhile Tuesday, China's product safety regulator said Samsung will recall all Galaxy Note 7 smartphones sold in mainland China, amounting to around 191,000 units.

The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said it was investigating for defects in the devices

Samsung will either provide a full refund at the original price or replace Note 7 units with any other model of Samsung phone, and give refunds of the difference in prices, along with a 300 yuan ($45) voucher.
http://www.wxyz.com/news/national/samsu ... new-issues

[wvjohn]

That's a pretty big hit to the brand. It's not like some xyz company making Iphone knockoffs.

[Pugsley]

Omitting the exploding, was the Note 7 good at anything?

[FlyingPenguin]

It was highly rated in reviews. It has a stunning screen.

[Genom]

Great looking devices, but this is pretty much the death of the Note branding.

[reno]

It was highly rated in reviews. It has a stunning screen.

I agree and Im also expecting more of there cell phones to be recalled down the road ! i personally know my S6 Galaxy get pretty warm at times ! works great but power loss is a problem when it get warm seem to drain twice as fast when it happens !

[FlyingPenguin]

There's been no reports of any other of their phones having battery issue.

They decided to make their own batteries for the Note 7 instead of using their usual supplier. Obviously that was a mistake.

The shame is that millions of otherwise perfectly good phones (if they fixed the battery issue) are just going to get shredded and they'll write the whole thing off as a loss.

[FlyingPenguin]

This guy has a point. This might force phone and tablet manufacturers to go back to removable batteries. This is going to be a recycling nightmare since the batteries are hard to remove.

https://www.wired.com/2016/10/samsung-exploding-note-7/

[FlyingPenguin]

Samsung ships flameproof boxes for Note 7 returns
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/ ... l-service/

[wvjohn]

At least they disabled the VR thing so people who didn't get the word won't get their faces melted.

[FlyingPenguin]

There's been one analysis by a battery expert somewhere that I read that the likely issue that caused the problem in the "fixed" phones was that they made the replacement battery slightly thicker to fix the first problem, but as a result that made it easier to pinch the battery during construction when it's glued into the phone and then the case is sealed around it.

This is apparently a serious issue with ALL phones with soft non removable batteries. You have to be real careful not to pinch or crimp the battery during assembly or you risk internal damage to the pack that risks shorting a cell.

In light of this fiasco, I wonder if governments will impose regulations on this considering the very real risk of fire. Another good reason to go back to removable hard shell batteries IMO.

[Err]

Samsung has really shot themselves in the foot. It's going to take a major redesign of the S series to get consumer confidence back up again. As as been stated several times in this thread, Samsung need to go back to hard shell replaceable batteries. Stop trying to copy Apple because Android will never take over the iOS market. The share Android currently has is what it's probably going to be for the long term. I hate that it comes down to our governments having to impose regulations but you can't have phones exploding because of the "our phone is the thinnest" mentality many manufacturers have today.