Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Explodes In New York, Burns Six-Year-Old Boy (arstechnica.com) 202
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A six-year-old boy from Brooklyn has reportedly become the latest victim of Samsung's disastrous exploding Galaxy Note 7 batteries. The boy had been using the device at his family home when it "suddenly burst into flames," according to the New York Post. He was rushed to hospital with burns to his body. Samsung issued a recall of 2.5 million of its latest flagship phone on September 2 -- which had only been released the previous month -- after 35 reports that lithium batteries were exploding while they were being charged. The injured boy's grandmother said that the fire caused by the phone was strong enough to "set off alarms in my house." "He is home now," Linda Lewis told press. "He doesn't want to see or go near any phones. He's been crying to his mother." Samsung issued a statement on Saturday, urging owners of the Galaxy Note 7 to "power down your device and return to using your previous phone. We will voluntarily replace your Galaxy Note 7 device with a new one, beginning on September 19th... We acknowledge the inconvenience this may cause in the market but this is to ensure that Samsung continues to deliver the highest quality products to our customers." The recall has caused Samsung's stock to plunge. On Monday, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. stock suffered from its biggest one-day price decline in its 28-year history as a public company.
Smartphones (Score:2)
Re:Smartphones (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Smartphones (Score:5, Insightful)
the adults really should have not been letting him play with it
Plot twist: perhaps they did it on purpose so they can now sue Samsung and cash in.
Re:Smartphones (Score:5, Informative)
If they sue, Samsung is in trouble cause it admitted a fault and issued a recall. Shouldn't we encourage companies to recall products when there are safety hazards and they are willing to take the financial hit and do the responsible thing? They will never admit fault if it exposes them to liability in court.
Re:Smartphones (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Samsung coming forward and doing an across the board recall with a fairly significant level of media coverage is a good thing.
But in the end, Samsung produced a defective and dangerous device and people were hurt. Samsung is still on the hook in civil courts because some people didn't get the message about the recall, or didn't understand the message.
If I were a judge (and I obviously am not), I think a class action case against Samsung should be divided along where people were reasonably expected to have heard the recall announcement. Anyone before that time is one group, and anyone after that time has to file individually or form a different class action lawsuit.
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However for a company to come out and openly admit that there are faults in its product, opens it up to all sorts of claims. You don't want the government to have to sue each company into a recall, you want them to do it voluntarily. Of
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remaining quiet could be criminal negligence. theoretically that can not only include stiff fines, and nearly unlimited civil penalities, but prison time for those involved in covering up.
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Samsung is the redistributor of the battery. The suit has to be jointly against Samsung and the battery manufacturer.
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If the faulty battery was in a lawn mower or model airplane then we probably wouldn't have had young children hurt and people would have not have been likely to be holding the device in their hands while it was charging. The battery manufacturer might not necessarily have much control over what kind of end products use their batteries. Although if it's a special order just to fit inside the confines of a particular phone or tablet, then I agree that the battery manufacturer has significant responsibility fo
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So far UL's record is solid, and they've been around over 100 years. Their safety standards are reviewed and approved by the government, if you think there needs to a government aspect to it. Although I will admit that UL's for-profit status is likely a cause for some to question their ethical obligations.
Don't think for one second that governments are somehow immune to the same sort of corruption you imply. Both private corporations and public bureaucracies can be influenced by money and political pressure
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Sorry but once a company takes every reasonable effort to make a situation safe (which they have done) there should be no more liability.
I think this may be the single most stupid thing I've ever seen someone say on Slashdot, and I've been here a pretty long time.
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You're right. Companies should be encouraged to do nothing unless the government or a well funded lawsuit tells them. Good corporate citizenry should be discouraged. Yay capitalism.
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Punitive may be appropriate given the apparent lack of testing before releasing the product.
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I'd rather die by Samsung burn than have an iphone without a headphone jack
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The ISP or phone supplier must surely have sent a broadcast message to all their subscribers, warning them of the defective battery design.
A software change in the phone is going to measure battery temperature, and if it is above a threshold, stop the charging. Thats about it.
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Shame on you, Samsung! Shame! (Score:2)
The market WANTS removable batteries, and an a removable sdcard. The market wants this BADLY.
Samsung, you spurned the desires of the market, thinking you knew best.
You did this to accelerate planned obsolescence and force the purchase of replacement phones long before the service life of the electronics had reached a reasonable end. Had these batteries been removable, replacement of the faulty/dangerous parts would have been greatly simplified.
Samsung, you have not received a tenth of the market punishment
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'its [sic] been 10 days since ...'
Almost as long as /. requires between postings.
Re:Smartphones (Score:4, Informative)
and the OTA updates will be deployed.... soon after the carriers approve them and be active after the users use the phone they've been told not to and download and accept the update.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.co.u... [huffingtonpost.co.uk]
It would be nice if that story was real.
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So they are running out to buy the brand new Note 7 but they aren't technology minded? Not defending Samsung as they made a defective product and they should be accountable for that. But it has been all over the front pages of newspapers, web sites and everywhere on the internet. I haven't looked for it as it doesn't affect me but I have seen it on TV more than a dozen times and god knows how many times on various websites.
Which means what? Here's what actually happens. When I was the president of a youth hockey organization, an adult came to a board meeting, and told us we had a terrible failing in getting the word out about ourselves.
"You need to have newspaper advertisements, ads in the local magazines, ads in all the rinks and on television. And brochures!"
So I pulled out the receipts for all of the above, and told him where he could find the brochures. His only reply was that we needed to find better ways and times
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Samsung can only do that if the person allows themselves to be notified.
You hit on the important part of the effort. If Samsung makes a diligent attempt to contact the person, they have covered themselves. If the person they are trying to contact doesn't open their mail, well that's now the individual's fault.
I've had a few recalls on my Jeep, and that's the metric - they contact me, and it is my choice and responsibility after that.
Side note: oftentimes Slashdotters believe that companies are acting in their self-interests by avoiding recall notices. In fact, it might be
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This isn't some 2 bit pointless local hockey team that would barely rate a mention in the local rag. This has been a major story for the past X days on every communications medium, radio, TV, newspapers, internet.
Way to not get it You win one big whooshie.
The point is you can advertise as much as you want, and people will miss all of it. Has nothing to do with your assessment of our league, which was by the way, rather large, but with people in general.
point at just about any tech or news site in the world and it will almost certainly have rated a mention. It has been mentioned on everything from local news reports to international media and press releases.
The problem is people do miss stuff. Some people are not interested in Tech. Didn't you catch all those early 2000's commercials where the important looking person spouts "Just tell me the right thing to buy!" ?
That you or I might read and look and know is irrele
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Adult supervision is now required for all smartphones.
Considering how many smartphones don't even try to block the ability to access hardcore porn, this should be common fucking sense.
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Here's my idea of proper adult supervision. "Here you go, kid. There's only one thing I want you to remember: Nothing you see on a screen can hurt you, because nothing you see on a screen is real. Have fun."
Spoken like a true human who's never earned the title of parent.
Hey, I do babysitting for $15 an hour... Here's my number, 36-24-36, give me a call...
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Negligence? (Score:2)
Surely they're aware of the recall. They gave a child in their care a device that is known it catch on fire under normal use.
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My kid loves his lawn darts, you insensitive clod!
I didn't know that (Score:2)
I had been following the thing a little bit but I thought the fire danger was just while charging, not under normal use...
If I didn't know, I don't know how some random non-technical family is supposed to know anything about it whatsoever.
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also my kid would have a 200$ tablet not a 900$ smart phone, but then again what do i know, im just a stoner lol
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This happened in New York City. $900 for a smartphone is nothing there compared to the rent.
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I totally agree, but these things aren't marketed towards thriftier people like you and me, and people like you and me certainly wouldn't spend that much money on a tablet/phablet and give it to some kid who's just going to beat it up. I have a friend who's a single mom with a 7-year-old boy, and holy crap does that kid beat stuff up; I wouldn't put anything delicate or expensive anywhere near him. But I have an inkling that these Brooklynites aren't like me, and have money to burn.
Reaction to recall: (Score:2)
Some big company is issuing a recall because their gadget can explode. This company is dead serious about it, urging user to keep using their older phone until they receive replacement for the newer-explodey phone.
In short: GADGET CAN EXPLODE, COMPANY WANTS YOU TO REPLACE IT.
You:
A. REPLACE: Hide the thing away in some solid trusted container and bring the shit as fast as you can to the nearest shop for replacement before it explodes.
B. IGNORE: You give it to your kid to muck around - specially because said
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Someone should *REALLY* call child protection service over this one. If the (grand-)parents are *THAT* stupid, chances are high that the kid is exposed to other risks due to the irresponsibility and stupidity of close family.
A lot of people don't watch or read the news -- and I don't blame them, as it's 99% hyped up garbage.
I can easily imagine a lot of affected Note 7 owners -- approximately 2.5 million of them -- weren't exposed to the recall message for some reason.
Sitting in such harsh judgment is pretty immature.
Tracking down smartphones (Score:2)
I can easily imagine a lot of affected Note 7 owners -- approximately 2.5 million of them -- weren't exposed to the recall message for some reason.
We're speaking about smartphones.
- As per the various laws that were put into action in the name of "protection against terrorism" after 9-11, lots of countries (including the US) require tracking off all users of cell phone services (even pay as you go) to be properly registered. That means, at some point during purchase, this smartphone was associated with a SIM card that has an identity linked to it.
It's not necessarily the SIM card that finally ended up in the phone (e.g.: the grand parents might have b
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These were my thoughts, I see there's been news coverage and "public statements" but if the parents don't regularly watch the news how far has Samsung gone to ensure people get the message?
Yeah, good point. WhoTF still watches "the news" these days anyway? Not people buying the latest $900 smartphone. The people who still watch the evening news are pretty advanced if they have a cellphone at all; most are still using landlines and many are probably on oxygen.
These are phones, couldn't the carriers call o
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You get a big message whenever they release an update too.
Maybe the carriers can prevent this somehow dunno, but in that case blame them.
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Well, with this discussion, I'm now hoping that it'll come out that Samsung *did* try to notify customers over-the-air like this, but that the carriers blocked it for stupid legal reasons. Then I want to see some customers who actually had them catch on fire sue the carriers for millions, and then the federal government arrest the execs and lock them up for criminal negligence.
We could really use a big shake-up in the wireless telecom industry in this country. Hopefully Verizon will be the hardest-hit.
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I believe I read somewhere else Samsung does plan to disable the devices around the end of the month. Maybe this will accelerate the timeline...
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Surely they're aware of the recall. They gave a child in their care a device that is known it catch on fire under normal use.
Why would they be proven to be aware? The only way to prove that a person knows, or has a good presumption of knowing that the Samsungs like to go kablooey, is if Samsung does due dilegence and sends each owner a physical thing that explains the problem.
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Fisher-Price Glow Seahorses also catch fire [whattoexpect.com]. And were not recalled. My kid actually has one in her crib. According to the baby books and baby stuff manufacturers everything will kill your kid. When we bought our crib the vendor had just come out with a new model with special "green" stains and finishes that would reduce the risk of SIDS. We habitually recall things where 1 in a million uses under some strange circumstances resulted in some guy hurting himself. Instead of writing it off as 'some guy did so
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I asked for a fire extinguisher once after unplugging a coworker's monitor, because it started hissing loudly and smoking. Our branch chief came over, facepalmed, and lectured the guy about not being allowed to bring his own 35 inch monitor into work.
Still way too little schadenfreude on the net... (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm hoping for a fake video of Jony Ive explaining that smartphone battery fires are caused by interference from the 3.5mm jack.
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Samsung did the right thing by admitting it right away. The lack of a "you're charging it wrong" type reaction saved it from becoming another -gate scandal.
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unplanned obsolescence (Score:2)
Looks like the company was a bit too eager to hit its planned obsolescence targets.
ignatius
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I think you are looking for fark [fark.com].
No Thermal Fuse? (Score:2)
I've used various thermal fuses to stop overheating in designs since the 1970s. Tell me why it should not be done in cellphone battery areas.
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Samsung have claimed it's a short circuit, not much a thermal fuse can do about that.
Re:No Thermal Fuse? (Score:5, Informative)
This comes from bad electrolyte or bad quality control in the battery's construction.
One of the following is happening:
1) the cathode of the battery is fraying apart too quickly. (LiON batteries have cathodes that shrink and swell under charge and discharge, as they need to have a very high permeability to ionic lithium salts in solution. The actual absorption of the electrolyte during charging splits the cathode apart slowly over time. That's why the batteries wear out. In this case, the cathode is prematurely disintegrating, and the frayed out bits are shorting with the annode.)
2) the electrolyte inside the pack is of poor quality/improper. Instead of just migrating into the porous cathode during charging, it is breaking down, and depositing metallic lithium dendrites inside the cathode. These can cause short circuits, much like tin whiskers do.
3) the charge logic is improper, causing either breakdown of the electrolyte, or causing premature cathode disintegration through overcharging.
in all cases, the fire happens after a dead short with the annode occurs inside the battery.
Normally, the charge controller uses a thermistor to tell if thr cell is charging properly or not.if it is not charging properly, it disables the cell to prevent electrolyte and cathode breakdown, and the subsequent fire these cause.
in the endless madness for thinner and thinner batteries, it is possible that thermally assisted detection of bad charging is less effective, because of the high surface area to weight ratio of the thiner battery cells. (they radiate the heat too quickly because they are thin and flat, so the thermistor reading isnt as accurate.)
Should, did not. (Score:2)
Tell me why it should not be done in cellphone battery areas.
In theory, cellphone batteries, because they are made of lithium(*) have EVEN MORE protection than that.
Tons of protection directly built into the battery case itself, and in the charging circuit.
In practice: someone somewhere along the supply and/or assembly manage to fuck up enough of these protection.
Thus Samsung joins the hall of shame previously occupied by
- Sony (and their incendiary laptop batteries back in the early 2000s) who managed to burn countless laptops, even of 3rd party brand to which Sony
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Have a read up on lithium batteries. No thermal fuse can stop them catching on fire once an internal short circuit has occurred.
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Fuses sit between the device and the battery. Not so much help when the fault is internal to the battery.
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LiPo defects can result in an internal short, and catastrophic exothermic results. If your cells don't have defects and operate correctly under normal temperature range, then a thermal fuse is quite helpful in keeping them from running away into a dangerous range.
lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) are much safer than typical lithium-polymer (LiCoO2 or LiMn2O4), but are lower capacity and thus heavier and bulkier for an equivalent capacity and are typically more expensive.
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We use Li+ batteries because they're fast-reacting (release energy quickly) and high-energy-density (lots of charge in little space). That's the point of new battery tech: More current draw (ability to power more-demanding things) for more time (ability to power longer).
That means any future battery tech will lean further toward high power output and high power density. We've got ideas for novel lithium compounds, organic cells, and nano-electrodes that should supply higher voltages, heavier current d
Just how I feel (Score:2, Funny)
He doesn't want to see or go near any phones. He's been crying to his mother.
Don't worry, kid- for Christmas you're getting an iPhone 7 and an expensive set of wired headphones!
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Don't worry, kid- for Christmas you're getting an iPhone 7 and an expensive set of wired headphones!
... which you then plug into the phone using the included Lightning to 3.5mm adapter. I suppose that's what you meant, right?
Stock price plunge (Score:2)
It's too bad that lousy software and bloatware/crapware don't cause companies' stock prices to plunge. Then maybe they'd do something about those things.
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Compared to Chrome, Firefox isn't bloated.
Not only is the Galaxy Note 7 waterproof.. (Score:2)
It can also be used to boil water in an emergency. This will be a boon to backpackers.
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Exploding or going up in flames (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there any reliable information what actually happens?
Re:Exploding or going up in flames (Score:5, Informative)
If I recall, technically an "explosion" is supersonic deflagration, which of course is accompanied by a shock wave. It's the shock wave that's the salient feature of an explosion.
Practically anything flammable can explode if it is finely mixed with oxygen (or an oxidizer) and it is *contained*. If you pour the black powder from a bullet into a line and touch it off it's go up pfft! But it won't explode because it's not contained. On the flip side flour or powdered coffee creamer can be sifted into a tube and ignited and it will explode, but not with much force.
A lithium ion cell has plenty of flammable bits inside, a source of O2 (the electrode), and of course it is contained, but it's engineered not to explode. It's engineered not to catch fire too, so you can't rule rule out either possibility since something's gone very wrong.
It's not either/or too: you can get a small explosion that once it escapes its immediate confines dissipates into an expanding cloud of burning gas -- or even a fireball. It can be quite impressive, and while not packing the shattering power it would if all the fuel was consumed at supersonic speed, it can be quite impressive and destructive.
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Flour has detonated with extreme force. Enough to demolish a building. Thirteen abstract people died.
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Yes, if you scale a weak explosive enough the size of the shockwave gets arbitrarily large. However if you try this in a cardboard concrete form (sonotube) the sonotube will remain intact. You suspend the tube over an ignition source like a candle and sift flour into the top.
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There is a chemists definition of explosion, and there is a less rigorous colloquial definition. A can of your favorite fizzy drink might be said to explode if the conditions are right, but really it's just gas expanding rapid through a failure in the container. It's particularly violent if you were to say, microwave it, then you'd have potentially super-heated sugar water spraying all over your relatively flimsy human skin, and I promise you every newspaper would report that as an "explosion".
So while ther
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How your supply chain can build or destroy a brand (Score:3)
The question, that remains unanswered at the moment, is just how damaged is the Samsung Phone brand?
Is it on life support now after what just happened to a 6 year old NY-er?
As a parent I'm not keen on allowing any of my gang (7, 5, 3, & 6 mnths) to touch our smart phones, less so now.
This is where brand value and customer confidence in brand comes to the fore, when it threatens the safety of those who you protect.
Xmas time is going to be a tough one for Samsung and, for not paying attention to the quality and safety of supplied parts, they deserve it.
Which android brand will take their place?
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Remotely brick? (Score:3)
Would this be legal? Not that I'm advocating that sort of behavior, just wondering...as-is, it seems we barely own anything and are just borrowing it from the company...
Re:Remotely brick? (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe not brick it (because people might try to fix it).
Just put a huge warning message that the device is dead and can not be used anymore. Give the people a code that they can use to claim a refund, and tell them they don't even have to bring it to a store. They can just chuck it away and claim a refund.
That way, no parent gives it to a young kid, and they scare them enough into getting rid of it.
Is it always when charging or no? (Score:2)
I saw someone on twitter ask Benson Leung to test but he doesn't have a Note 7 USB-C cable.
USB-C being a real mess of a standard, it'd be great if people followed it to the letter but so far the past 2 or 3 years has been a shambles of risk and potentially fried devices.
Bomb in a pocket (Score:2)
Rather than carrying a stick pf dynamite in my pocket, next to important organs that I would prefer to keep, I would rather have a little thicker phone that allows for bigger, less energy dense battery. And then optimize software to reduce power demands. An old fashioned alphanumeric pager used to last weeks on a pair of non-explosive AA batteries. When the phone is not in active use, it does not need any more functionality to display notifications and receive phone calls on a secondary e-ink screen. When I
Could've had an easy solution (Score:2)
I wonder if Samsung is wishing they had listened to users and kept batteries user-removable.
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Safety Warning! (Score:2)
Not a Note 7 (Score:3, Informative)
Hurray for QC (Score:2)
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I wonder how EEs many lost their jobs in this?
As an EE I would also try to point my finger at some firmware guys, at some semiconductor guys and some chemical engineers. There's a lot involved in these sorts of batteries in consumer devices, plenty of blame to share.
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There's a lot involved in these sorts of batteries in consumer devices, plenty of blame to share.
And eventually some janitor and the new guy in the mailroom will be fired, and the CEO will get a nice bonus.
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As an EE I would also try to point my finger at some firmware guys, at some semiconductor guys and some chemical engineers. There's a lot involved in these sorts of batteries in consumer devices, plenty of blame to share.
Samsung/Samsung SDI have already admitted it's a manufacturing defect.
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ZERO. It is not a design fault. It is poor workmanship. Samsung themselves make the battery cells. A 3rd party company assembles the cells into battery packs. The battery pack assembly is what is at fault here. From everything I have read.
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But the problem is with the battery terminals causing an over current condition and over heating. Totally an electrical problem.
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play games. there are lots of mobile games for young children. some of them of actual educational value, most of them of value of keeping a bored child busy while parents get daily chores done.
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Good luck getting super thin industrial design on a device that has a removable battery.
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Where are these people who are demanding ever-thinner phones, anyway? Most people I know have their phones inside of thick cases (Otterbox etc.) because the phones themselves are too thin and fragile already. Give me a removable and replaceable battery over a thinner phone, any day of the week.
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I am, it's entirely my fault that we're in this situation.
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I'm waiting for phones to be one molecule thick.
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