Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 139 posts

Re: US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements

#81

Post by weinzierl »

jacquesm wrote: post #48
sho_hn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung Electronics doesn't make the batteries - but Samsung SDI do, along with Chinese Amperex Technology (for the third sold in China). My understanding is that both devices with SSDI and with Amperex batteries have caught on fire (IIRC there have been failures inside and outside of China), so maybe a chassis design defect subjecting the batteries to unexpected strain? Samsung SDI also manufacture iPhone batteries.

> so maybe a chassis design defect subjecting the batteries to unexpected strain? It should take more than a little bit of unexpected strain to ignite a consumer electronics device.

Structural design is always a compromise and it's not hat other manufacturers haven't underestimated the forces involved in the past (e.g. bend gate).

Re: US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements

#82

Post by thrownblown »

dotancohen wrote: post #69

What phones are an alternative to the Note? I use my Note 3's stylus dozens of times a day. No other stylus comes close, as it uses Wacom technology as opposed to standard stylus' capacitance sensing. The Wacom technology needs the phone to support it. Are there any good stylii for writing text (i.e. dragging across the screen) for generic capacitance screens? All stylii that I've seen are good for selecting things (…

The first generation Nvidia shield had a great stylus.

Re: US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements

#83

Post by pawadu »

B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #45
Uupis wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the strong push for color _quality_ (please excuse my lack of a better term) on iOS devices lately, I find the OLED-equipped iPhone rumors a bit confounding. Last I recall they looked a bit off. Nice, but a bit off. That said, my experience with OLED screens is a bit dated, so maybe the color reproduction has improved.

I expect paulcole is right ... I was recently in the market for a phone, and considering an iPhone SE. But unfortunately I've got hooked on Lumia OLEDs, so I'm taking one last cheap hit from the rapidly cooling MS pipe while Apple gets that duck lined up ;-)

Have a cheap "Lumia OLED" myself. There was nothing unfortunate about thay buy. Great display, pretty good phone overall, and the money I saved went to a new tablet.

Also, I now have an excuse to not install the stupid apps friends and family and random guy at the bus stop recommend.

Re: US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements

#84

Post by endisukaj »

Steko wrote: post #53
CookieMon wrote: post #16

Why did Note 7's have this problem? I assume the fault is entirely in the battery (?), so did Samsung change how the batteries were manufactured this year? Does the Note 7 have power demands that mean they can't go back to tried and tested battery manufacture? (Hoping there are EE's or manufacturing people here that might have some educated guesses)

This is the best writeup I've seen of how this happened: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-18/samsung-c... tldr plus my speculation: * Leaked iPhone 7 specs made Samsung shoot for the moon with Note 7 design * Specs designed in boardroom called for Note 7 be lighter, shorter and narrower than iPhone 7+ but also have a larger screen, a significantly larger battery and a lot of internal room taken up by t…

> Engineers at Samsung don't have standing to tell execs something can't be done.

I feel this whole mess would have been avoided had this fact not been true.

Re: US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements

#85

Post by gmac »

JimmyAustin wrote: post #78
gmac wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commonly there is no water fountain.

There is always a bathroom.

Yes ... but sometimes only hot water is available, and at all times the quality of water not marked 'drinking water' could in principle be suspect (it might come via a tank somewhere — this is certainly common in old UK domestic plumbing — and the tank might have dead rat in it, etc.).

Re: US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements

#86

Post by hrrsn »

sho_hn wrote: post #9
maxpert wrote: post #4

I don't know how fatal this will be for Samsung next time they go out and sell phones; but people have got a taste of buying from a company that doesn't have any sales or customer rep centers easily accessible where people can go and complaint. I really hope it doesn't turn out to be fatal for them but I also hope it breaks the Samsung monopoly over Android and let brands like LG, HTC shine.

LG has a top competitor out right now in the V20. Removable battery, MIL-spec drop proof, second wide angle rear camera, concert-capable stereo mics with manual controls, a second screen that's actually useful (it's located in what would otherwise be dead bezel next to the front camera, and shows e.g. notifications while fullscreen, or can be used as a taskbar), usable software (read: close to vanilla Android Nougat…

It's a sad state of affairs that a removable battery is now a headline feature. In the past I didn't care but these days I sure do.

Re: US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements

#87

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

Steko wrote: post #80
pawadu wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * Specs designed in boardroom called for Note 7 be lighter, shorter and narrower than iPhone 7+ but also have a larger screen, a significantly larger battery ... The Note series has always had a better display to size ratio and a larger battery. I don't see why this particular iteration should all the sudden have problems with that. For reference: Galaxy Note 5 153.2 x 76.1 x 7.6 mm (6.03 x 3.00 x 0.30 in) Weight 1…

> I don't see why this particular iteration should all the sudden have problems with that. Well there's larger and there's a lot larger. This particular iteration increased the gap substantially. 3500 mAh (GN7) >> 3000 mAH (GN5) ~ 2950 mAH (i7+) > 2750 mAH (i6S+) Below article offers speculation either way: that both the design itself and push for larger batteries was at fault and/or that it is simply a manufacturing…

If you look at the ifixit tear down, the Samsung GN 7 battery also looks smaller than the iPhone 7 Plus battery. I can't imagine having a higher energy density is doing Samsung any favors.

Could this be why Apple pushes so hard on the SoC front? It's technically easier to increase performance and reduce power consumption of your SoC than it is to improve the battery capacity safely?

Re: US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements

#88

Post by swiley »

yladiz wrote: post #33
_swa8 wrote: post #7

It still seems to be OK to bring Note 7s on airplanes. Not bottles of water, though, that's too dangerous.

The problem is that with a water bottle, you can immediately see it's some kind of liquid on the x-ray and disallow it during inspection, whereas the Note 7 isn't immediately apparent when inspected from afar. While I don't agree with the liquid ban, it's much easier to ban a liquid than it is to ban a specific model of a phone.

If the radio is on you can watch for the MAC address.

Re: US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements

#89

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

gmac wrote: post #55
Steko wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So carry an empty bottle/tumbler/thermos and fill it up at the water fountain?

Commonly there is no water fountain.

I've seen a lot of airports (recently PDX and O'Hare) that have water bottle filler up dispensers past security.

Re: US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements

#90

Post by TeMPOraL »

eksemplar wrote: post #28
kayoone wrote: post #25

Screwing up once happens, even if it shouldn't. Doing it twice will seriously shatter peoples trust in these devices and make them think twice before purchasing a new Samsung phone again. Samsung is a behemoth but this can really hurt their smartphone division.

After 2 years my S2 became a slow unfunctional piece of dead tech. I tried resetting it through the Samsung tools, which didn't help, so I rooted it and tried different versions of basic android on it, which didn't help. At the same time I had two friends who were experiencing the same kinds of problems, who let me toy with their phones. It's completely anecdotal but three similar model phones breaking in exactly the…

To match an anecdote with an anecdote - I've been using S4 for 3 years, and then gave it to my brother (I've upgraded to S7 with contract renewal), who's been using it for the past year too. The phone is still going strong. Feels slow-ish today, true, but still better than some of the cheaper Android phones OOTB.

I blame Android's continued bloat creep[0] for that slowdown though. My brother had S3 before, and so does my SO, and they were all becoming less and less usable with time and each system update...

--

[0] - Is there an official term for the phenomenon that software bloats expands to cancel out any improvements in hardware?

Post reply on HN