Live data from Hacker News

Replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phone catches fire on Southwest plane

theverge.com

181–190 of 195 posts

Re: Replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phone catches fire on Southwest plane

#181
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't even have been known to the public, if it happened only in Korea, because they have a complete control of the media in S Korea. When it first happened it Korea, media tried to dismiss it as if it was a false report by black consumers who are trying to win some money by suing Samsung. I found it pretty funny because, in Korea, you never win against any big companies in the court. There are no scenarios whe…

What about social media? Is it also difficult for such news to spread there?

People are afraid to share anything that talks bad about Samsung, because they believe it will affect them negatively in the future when searching for jobs or such.

Re: Replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phone catches fire on Southwest plane

#182

It's my understanding that all Lithium Ion batteries can fairly easily catch fire if they are not treated somewhat carefully, typically by a circuit that prevents loads that might cause it to heat up. Is it theoretically possible that malware could be designed that would cause a Lithium Ion powered smart phone's battery to catch fire? I'm thinking it would be more of a low-level firmware update where a programmable l…

Though I am only an electronics hobbyist I don't think this is possible. Most of the battery charging chips that you are talking about don't have firmware, that would require them to be I would guess 10x more expensive.

Re: Replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phone catches fire on Southwest plane

#183
post #171
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mind if I inquire what your career is? I would love a technology-related job that allows me to travel like that.

Just travel. Focusing on travel-related jobs is not a great goal. Focus on highly rewarding work, and pay your fares.

I second this. Work trips are very different from personal travel, and much less fun than people assume. A well paying job with generous vacation time (real vacation, not "available via email" vacations) is better, in my opinion.

Re: Replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phone catches fire on Southwest plane

#184
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just travel. Focusing on travel-related jobs is not a great goal. Focus on highly rewarding work, and pay your fares.

I second this. Work trips are very different from personal travel, and much less fun than people assume. A well paying job with generous vacation time (real vacation, not "available via email" vacations) is better, in my opinion.

I had a job that involved a lot of travel back in the day. I worked for a telecoms installing unix workstations and oracle servers for planning radio networks (calculating signal strength per frequency over terrain and subscriber maps). I loved it, but it's not for everyone. Long periods on your own, sometimes in locked-down societies like Saudi Arabia. I ended up playing a _lot_ of Civilization 2. Still I got to go to Tanzania, South Africa, Bangladesh, Japan and lots of countries in Europe and the Middle East and occasionally got to do sight seeing at weekends. Not so great once you're married with kids.

Re: Replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phone catches fire on Southwest plane

#185
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this thing was supposedly off when it started smoking: "Green said that he had powered down the phone as requested by the flight crew and put it in his pocket when it began smoking." What's the remedy here? All Galaxy Notes in the airtight metal box until we land?

Removable batteries. A quaint little feature we've had since the first 'portable' brick phones. No one needs a device to be razor thin.

If the phone was powered down, it looks like this might be a chemical reaction in the batteries. Taking it out might just remove barriers between the source of combustion and flamables in the environment.

Re: Replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phone catches fire on Southwest plane

#186
post #69

Samsung really needs to cut bait here, accept and admit fully that they made a major engineering mistake, come clean, and forcibly recall ALL the devices, before there is a major disaster. The time for serious, adult action was several weeks ago. From here on out, they deserve what they get.

Samsung has issued a forcible recall for all the devices. This was not one of the recalled device, it's a new model without the original flaw. This must have been something different. Which begs the question - given the hundreds of millions of smartphones with out there - how many, even without a manufacturing flaw, end up smoking/catching fire? 1 in a million? 1 in 10 million?

Either it's a new flaw, or their fix failed to adequately address the original flaw. There was a report of someone in China having a replacement Note 7 burn out on them as well[0], so this is not an isolated incident for the 'fixed' phones.

[0] http://bgr.com/2016/09/27/note-7-recall-china-samsung-fire-e...

Re: Replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phone catches fire on Southwest plane

#187
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not the only ones, even recently. http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/08/mcdonalds-recalls-hap... http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2016/08/04/psa-basis-peak-wear... http://www.pcworld.com/article/3050377/hardware/major-toshib... https://www.nextpowerup.com/news/29739/xiaomi-mi-band-2-is-p... https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2016/Denon-Recalls-Rechargeable...

Even the iPhone 7 is not immune; my boss got one that suddenly started overheating and he had to get it replaced. http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/iphone-7-randomly-overhe...

That doesn't appear to be battery related, but the camera app somehow over-taxing the CPU.

Re: Replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phone catches fire on Southwest plane

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about as relevant as saying he calmed his nerves from the whole ordeal with an ice cold coca cola.

Not really. It implies that the owner no longer has faith in Samsung products and has switched, so I'd say it's relevant. They could have said that he replaced it with "another brand," which would have been more appropriate, but I still think it's relevant.

It's still not relevant to the story, which is about the phone exploding. The owner losing faith in Samsung doesn't matter. The only way it would be relevant is if he has decided ahead of time that he was switching to the iPhone and Samsung tried to bump him off because of it.

Re: Replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phone catches fire on Southwest plane

#189

It seems to be that Samsung is getting a lot of extra scrutiny based on their recall and the news is exploiting this. Phone batteries have been known to overheat and explode for years now and it is in no way brand specific. I think the way Samsung handled the whole situation was above and beyond how other companies may have responded. They identified an issue, and replaced everything. I am not saying that Samsung cou…

But Samsung didn't issue a recall until forced to by the US regulator. At first they just issued a patch to limit charging to 60%. The US regulator is furious with Samsung for the way the handled this[0]. Meanwhile in China they delayed the recall there until negative media pressure forced them to do the same. "On 2 September, Samsung issued a recall of 2.5 million phones in certain countries, leaving out China."[1]. Samsung behaved appalling in this.

[0]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/09/16/us-regulato...

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37416914

Re: Replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phone catches fire on Southwest plane

#190
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So replaceable batteries dont explode?

They can, but you can separate the device from the battery in case of recalls, thus preventing natural resource waste. Also, my Galaxy Note 1 battery blew up on me because I used a cheap charger. I simply took it out, disposed of it at a city waste center, and put in a new battery for 15€. Try this with a "closed" phone. Either you can do it yourself, which requires at minimum 3h time + specialized equipment (e.g. re…

Battery replacement on an iPhone? Give me 10minutes
Post reply on HN