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Samsung to Permanently Discontinue Galaxy Note 7 Smartphone

wsj.com

131–140 of 333 posts

Re: Samsung to Permanently Discontinue Galaxy Note 7 Smartphone

#131

I don't get this... Its the battery.. not the phone. Surely discontinue the battery.

Yes, I find it strange too. Why can't they simply replace the battery with some other model? Even if it's internal, replacing it would cost way less than writing off the entire line.

Re: Samsung to Permanently Discontinue Galaxy Note 7 Smartphone

#132

[drip, drip, drip, drip, drip…] They have spent a huge amount of money on marketing this phone. I wrote a week or so back it could be the end of Samsung and people told me I was an idiot - they make so many other things, their spread is so broad, they can just produce the next phone and move on. This has done untold damage to their brand in the eyes of the average consumer and has wasted so much money, I think they a…

I completely disagree. People love shiny and they have a short memory even though there's this wonderful thing called the internet that can remember things for them. All Samsung has to do is come out with something shiny and people will be buying it and blogging about it.

People still buy Ford cars even though they made the Pinto and their SUVs used Firestone tires. People still buy Toyota without even a thought as to whether the brakes work. People still buy any car whatsoever with an airbag without worrying if it'll spontaneously explode and, if not kill them, shred their face.

Re: Samsung to Permanently Discontinue Galaxy Note 7 Smartphone

#133
The question is, "What replaces the absence of Galaxy Note 7 for another year or so (until the next version comes out)?" Note 5? A re-branded Note 7 with a slightly different look and hardware? Would Samsung junk the Note name and come up with some other name to bury this? My guess is that the Note name would go away completely or be superseded by a different name (with a prefix or suffix). That name now deserves to be erased and forgotten as quickly as possible.

Re: Samsung to Permanently Discontinue Galaxy Note 7 Smartphone

#134

The subject says it all, but am I the only one who isn't a subscriber of the Wall Street Journal? Is there no free source on the Internet for this same piece of news? I'm not saying everything should be free. I build paid-for services on the web myself. But how is “To Read the Full Story, Subscribe or Sign In” useful on the Hacker News?

Because sometimes they break stories and have exclusive content and in depth info that others won't have immediately if ever. For example they were ahead of everyone with the Theranos news. I think the idea of putting links on HN is its better to know about it asap, rather than possibly using a slower or less comprehensive source.

But is this exclusive content?

Is there anything in the WSJ article that isn't in another source, like The Telegraph?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/10/11/samsung-tel...

Re: Samsung to Permanently Discontinue Galaxy Note 7 Smartphone

#135
post #131

I don't get this... Its the battery.. not the phone. Surely discontinue the battery.

Yes, I find it strange too. Why can't they simply replace the battery with some other model? Even if it's internal, replacing it would cost way less than writing off the entire line.

They could probably drop in a replacement with what, half the capacity? But that impacts the whole design of the 'phone. There's a huge difference between a phone that lasts one day and a phone that lasts half a day. So they'd be looking to lower the screen brightness, maybe find a less power-hungry processor and/or LTE chip,.... by the time you've finished accomodating that kind of change it's a new model anyway.

Re: Samsung to Permanently Discontinue Galaxy Note 7 Smartphone

#136
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that their washing machines are also exploding.

And their SSDs have hardware design flaws making them read slower and slower until the read speed of old cells is down to 1-2megabytes/second... of advertised 550megabytes/s. Remember that? It affected all Samsung EVO drives, which is marketing speak for all Samsung SLC based drives, which means budget drives, the Pro versions based on MLC were unaffected. But, the way Samsung handled my case, to deny warranty, and i…

>which is marketing speak for all Samsung SLC based drives, which means budget drives

Consumer SSDs use MLC. Enterprise SSDs use SLC almost exclusively or eMLC which has less issues than consumer grade MLC.

MLC is about storing multiple bits in a single tiny cell. This results in more capacity at the cost of total write cycles, read errors being more likely and slower read and write speeds.

TLC is MLC but with three bits per cell.

Re: Samsung to Permanently Discontinue Galaxy Note 7 Smartphone

#137
post #41

This is the second article i can't access in a short time. Please consider changing the url to the nytimes article or deleting the article on itselve. I don't think HN should contain links to paywalled sites like wsj.com

Many of us agree. Unfortunately per dang policy such links are allowed and we're not even supposed to discuss it in the comments here. I don't know what to suggest other than looking for alternatives to HN. If you would like an invite to lobste.rs I'm happy to send you one.

[deleted]

Re: Samsung to Permanently Discontinue Galaxy Note 7 Smartphone

#138
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obviously not good but yes, you were an idiot to say it could be the end of Samsung. They make everything from cutting edge phones to air-conditioning. One product in one business area going wrong like this is not going to be fatal.

Well, let's go through their other businesses. Samsung SDI is going to struggle in a World with cheap coal prices and political inclinations (cf. Trump campaign) to not care about environmental impacts. Samsung Heavy Industries is already struggling because of market demands for new container ships dropping off sharply in recent years - there has been a glut of supply for some years. Their Engineering and Constructio…

Samsung is too much of South Korea's GDP to go bankrupt. For Samsung to fail, the Korean economy would have to also fail, which is possible but unlikely.

I think that if you compare Samsung's Note 7 to Nokia's Burning Platform, the prospects for Samsung are significantly better (Nokia not only destroyed the value of 100% of their inventory but also all of their future inventory until the OS changeover happened; Samsung has a branding problem but can release another device).

Honestly, they should just rename it to something else (at the very least not the Note, but maybe even call it something other than Samsung in the US).

Edit: I do agree with your supposition that mobile is the primary revenue driver for Samsung, but I don't actually think they're generating a profit from mobile any more. I continue to contend that the only company that makes a profit on mobile is Apple and they continue to dominate that market for reasons that are fairly obvious (supply chain, silicon superiority, and software that works faster for the workloads consumers run on their devices).

Re: Samsung to Permanently Discontinue Galaxy Note 7 Smartphone

#139
post #96

Samsung - I want a slightly thicker phone, Square edges and a big battery that i can change out. Do this and im yours for life

I really wish they would. They are the ones that listened to people who were sick of how tiny the iphone and all of its clones were and went deep on a big phone. I still have a Note 3 and have little problem with it. I had no interest in the 7 because of the curved edges which I think is a stupid thing to do with phone screens. I will probably get a Pixel at some point and switch over to fi, but if Samsung does something interesting I will consider it.

Re: Samsung to Permanently Discontinue Galaxy Note 7 Smartphone

#140

[drip, drip, drip, drip, drip…] They have spent a huge amount of money on marketing this phone. I wrote a week or so back it could be the end of Samsung and people told me I was an idiot - they make so many other things, their spread is so broad, they can just produce the next phone and move on. This has done untold damage to their brand in the eyes of the average consumer and has wasted so much money, I think they a…

> This has done untold damage to their brand in the eyes of the average consumer

You'd be surprised about how much of the general public even knows that there is a type of Samsung phone that can spontaneously combust, and the proportion of those people that care and will continue to remember that fact when they are looking for a new phone is also going to be quite small.

I have had to explain the story to friends who gave me blank looks when I explained that my Samsung S7 was not the kind that exploded...

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