Samsung galaxy which models explode. Burning Samsung phones: what you need to know
The problem was corrected in new batches, but many of them burned.
While the world is discussing about the exploding iPhone 7 Plus, we decided to recall the cases of fire of a truly dangerous device – the Samsung Galaxy Note7.
The South Korean company omitted the Note 6 model from its lineup, considering that the number and scale of changes in the new smartphone allows it to “jump” one step. May be, Shouldn't you have angered the gods of arithmetic and logic?
Samsung sold about 2.5 million Galaxy Note7s, but a couple of weeks later launched a recall campaign. Naturally, this was not possible to do quickly, and we hear almost daily news about affected Note7 owners.
It all started almost immediately after the official start of sales.
1. After a fire, the house almost burned down
Schoolteacher Park Soo-Jung was forced to flee her bed when her brand new Galaxy Note7 suddenly burst into flames and filled her bedroom with smoke. The teacher escaped with fear and minor bruises after falling out of bed.
2. Blogger demonstrates a burnt Galaxy Note7
On on your Youtube channel user Ariel Gonzalez posted a video showing a Samsung Galaxy Note7 burning out while charging. Gonzalez is currently negotiating with Samsung for damages.
3. The garage burned down completely along with the Note7
Wesley Hartzog left his smartphone charging in the garage, which eventually burned out completely. According to Wesley, he missed the news that Samsung was recalling its new product due to a battery fire problem.
4. Note7 caused a jeep fire
American Nathan Dornacher left his Galaxy Note7 charging in a Jeep Grand Cherokee. After some time, he heard the alarming barking of a dog, looked outside and found his jeep engulfed in flames.
5. The man was left without pants. It could be even worse
Florida resident Jonathan Strobel suffered second-degree burns when a Samsung Galaxy Note7 exploded in his front pants pocket. Jonathan plans to sue the South Korean company for $15,000.
6. A child was injured by a Note7 fire
A six-year-old boy from Brooklyn suffered minor burns to his hands after a Samsung Galaxy Note7 caught fire in his hands. According to the child’s grandmother, the incident occurred while the grandson was watching a video on a smartphone that was charging.
7. Samsung smartphone damaged MacBook Pro
Chinese man Hui Renjie suffered minor burns to two fingers and damage to his MacBook from which the ill-fated Galaxy Note7 was charged. Interestingly, according to the Chinese user, the device was from a new “safe” batch.
7. Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge may also be unsafe
Recently, there was another case of a Samsung smartphone catching fire. This time the cause of the fire was Galaxy S7 Edge. The smartphone caught fire while charging. The owner of the house, Danielle Boutilier, was forced to call the firefighters. According to her, before the fire, the smartphone was constantly overheating. It is not yet clear whether it is a coincidence or all Galaxy S7s are unsafe.
Of course, there are dozens of cases of explosions and fires of the fiery flagship Samsung Galaxy Note7. We have collected those that were widely covered in the press.
The biggest failure in the mobile industry
On September 2, Samsung Mobile President Koh Dong Jin was forced to publicly apologize for the self-igniting Galaxy Note7.
Today, many airlines have called on airplane passengers to limit the use of their Samsung Galaxy Note7 smartphone. Capitalization of Samsung fell by $22 billion, while analysts note that the company's losses will be even greater. It's not just about the cost of a recall, but also about lost opportunities and company prestige.
Illustration copyright Reuters Image caption Samsung tried to improve the new smartphone model, but reports of problems began to come in again
Samsung has announced that it will stop all sales of the new model of its Galaxy Note smartphone due to reports that device fires continue even after repairs.
The company also urged consumers who have already purchased the new model not to use it and turn off the power while experts try to figure out the reasons for the defect.
What's going on?
Samsung introduced the Galaxy Note 7 in August. Then the smartphone was called one of the best Android phones. It was supposed to become the main competitor to Apple's iPhone 7.
However, customers soon began to receive complaints about defective batteries exploding when charging. According to Samsung, we are talking about only 35 cases of fire out of 2.5 million devices.
But in the end, Samsung recalled the entire batch and released an improved model of the smartphone. Then the company assured that after the corrections were made, the devices were safe to use.
But at the moment, there are already two cases of fire in devices issued to consumers instead of defective ones.
Customers who have an original Galaxy Note 7 or an updated replacement model are advised to turn off the device, not use it, or try to fix the defect themselves in any way.
Samsung has asked all of its wholesale and retail partners around the world to stop selling and exchanging Galaxy Note 7 while the investigation continues.
According to Korean media, Samsung will most likely permanently stop selling the new smartphone in the near future.
Illustration copyright AFP Image caption Smartphone scandal could seriously damage Samsung's reputation, experts sayWhy do they explode?
Samsung uses the standard lithium-ion batteries that the entire industry uses - what makes them so dangerous?
It is important to understand the design features of such batteries. They contain a cathode, anode and lithium.
The cathode and anode are separated by an organic liquid electrolyte and a porous separator membrane.
Lithium moves through the pores of this membrane between the cathode and anode.
If the battery is charged too quickly, it generates a lot of heat and lithium flakes can form around the anode, which can cause a short circuit.
Other defects that can lead to a short circuit include the presence of contaminants in the form of small amounts of metal or miniature holes in the smartphone body, which appear after several charges as a result of thermal deformation.
How did this affect the company?
The scandal with smartphones has already led to a drop in the capitalization of the Korean company.
Just two days after the scandal began, Samsung shares fell by $158. Based on the number of shares outstanding, the company's market value fell by more than $22 billion in early September.
On Tuesday, amid news of a repeated recall of defective phones, the company's shares fell by 8%.
As technology analyst Andrew Milrow points out, the exploding phone scandal comes at the worst possible time for Samsung.
"Samsung has been catching up with its competitors. But this catastrophic mistake will seriously damage the company's position in the smartphone market," Millrow told the BBC.
The current fiasco, according to experts, could have an extremely negative impact on the degree of consumer confidence in the company's products.
On Monday, October 10, Samsung Electronics announced the suspension of sales of Galaxy Note 7 phones, asking all owners of these smartphones to immediately turn them off. According to the company's press service, Samsung asked operators and partners in those countries where sales of the smartphone officially started to stop sales and the exchange process of the Galaxy Note7 while the Korean manufacturer conducts an investigation in close cooperation with regulators in these countries. According to the South Korean news agency Yonhap, a decision was also made to suspend the production of these smartphones.
Announcement at Aeroflot check-in counters. Photo: Gleb Bryansky/TASS
Since August 19, when sales of the Galaxy Note 7 started, more than 70 cases of fire with this smartphone have been recorded in the United States alone. It has gotten to the point where airlines refuse to carry these smartphones even in luggage. The failed launch of Samsung's flagship product was aggravated by news of exploding washing machines from the South Korean manufacturer. There was even a joke online that this was Samsung’s way of entering the arms market.
A month ago, the manufacturer already contacted owners of Galaxy Note 7 smartphones with a recommendation to turn off and exchange their devices as soon as possible, since there is a risk of overheating and fire. The problems that arose were attributed to defective batteries. As the company explained, as a result of a rare production error, some batteries have a short circuit between the electrodes. In September, Samsung assured users that smartphones offered as replacements for defective ones undergo thorough testing, which ensures that there is no threat of battery overheating in the future. The culprit for the faulty batteries has already been found - a subsidiary of Samsung SDI, which is the main supplier of batteries for the Galaxy Note 7. At the moment, the purchase of batteries from this company has been stopped.
The crisis worsened after complaints began to surface about devices overheating and catching fire, which were received during the first recall in September - i.e. Manufacturer's warranty did not apply. After this, the three largest US mobile operators AT&T, Sprint and Verizon refused to sell the new Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphone. A similar decision was made by the German company T-Mobile. It is possible that the dealers' demarche led to a global recall of the new model.
It is noteworthy that most of the information about the recall of the Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 edge was published on the Samsung website intended for users in the United States - a hotline has been opened for consultation and an offer to change your smartphone with a possible bonus of $25. The Russian Samsung website does not contain any hint of a total recall of the latest smartphone models. As the company's press service told Morning, this is due to the fact that official sales of the flagship model in our country have not yet begun.
The recall of all Galaxy Note 7 devices could cost Samsung at least $1 billion. There was great hope for the release of this model, since the new product was supposed to consolidate the success of the South Korean giant in the smartphone market, shown in revenue growth in the second quarter of 2016. Samsung smartphones confidently pushed aside Apple products, but their success was greatly undermined by the crisis with the Galaxy Note 7. And all this is happening at the time of the release of the new generation iPhone.
Today Aeroflot recommended its passengers not to use new Samsung phones - Galaxy Note Seven phablets. Phones cannot be taken on board or checked in as baggage. The reason is the self-ignition of the model. The phone's battery caught fire while charging due to an error during production; according to various sources, from 30 to 70 such cases have already been recorded, and the company was forced to recall the entire batch. At the same time, Samsung held a presentation of the exploding model a month earlier than usual. Analysts explained this by the desire to release the phone before Apple's presentation and set new standards for the industry. What came of it, in the “Rain” column.
Aeroflot, following the S7, responded to defects in new Samsung phones. In August, after the Korean company started selling a new model, reports began to appear that phones were exploding in their hands. The company blamed the fire on the phablets on a battery defect. Soon, airlines in the USA, Australia, Asian countries and European Air France and KLM prohibited passengers from taking the Galaxy on board and checking it in as luggage. The Russian Aeroflot released this message a day before the planned start of phone sales in Russia. Now, as a Samsung representative explained, the release of the Galaxy Note7 has been postponed until later in the fall. The exact date is still unknown, but these will already be phones from new production batches, Samsung explained to Dozhd.
Since the beginning of the scandal, the company has lost $22 billion in capitalization, its shares fell in price by 11%.
There is a teachable moment in this story. Samsung held the presentation of the problematic phone not in September, as usual, but in early August. Analysts explained this by the desire to introduce a new model earlier than Apple does, in order to secure the model’s status as a leader in its generation.
The pursuit of battery capacity (the company relied on the power of the processor and its battery) was the reason why Samsung did not conduct enough tests and released a crude product to the market, says Bloomberg analyst Reed Stevenson. Apple and Samsung have been battling in magistrates' courts since 2011. Through lawsuits totaling several billion dollars, companies are trying to prove who released a new feature or changed the design of a model first. The rivalry intensified after Samsung began producing expensive phones, and Apple, on the contrary, launched budget models.
This summer everyone was waiting for the release of the company's two flagship models. Trying to get ahead of its competitors by one month, Samsung lost this rivalry miserably. Having presented a new phone, which, according to the manufacturers' plans, was supposed to be better than the iPhone in everything, Samsung is now busy making excuses, preserving its image and searching for new suppliers.
In a situation where so much attention is paid to the war between the two companies, even 70 phones out of several million that catch fire can cause image damage from which Samsung will not recover immediately. And although the company's president makes the excuse that the defect was “too small to notice,” users and experts have already decided that Samsung simply overloaded the new model and did not conduct enough tests, trying to overtake Apple in everything.
Apple itself, the main competitor of the Korean company, did not speculate in any way on Samsung’s problems, limiting itself to a meaningful statement that their batteries meet all safety standards.
Results of high-speed computed tomography of a lithium-ion battery cell 15 seconds before the accident (top) and 1 second before the accident (bottom). Source: scientific article"In-operando high-speed tomography of lithium-ion batteries during thermal runaway"
, Nature Communications 6, Article number: 6924 (2015), doi:10.1038/ncomms7924 (open access)
In the second half of August, real hysteria began in the media after cases of spontaneous combustion of Galaxy Note 7 phones. Owners of any electrical appliances know that batteries Always heat up during intensive use. This is a completely natural property of batteries. At the same time, the engineer will tell you that any
A device containing a lithium-ion battery may explode if used under certain conditions. An overheated lithium-ion battery creates something of a chain reaction that can lead to an explosion, according to high-speed X-ray computed tomography and x-ray imaging of lithium-ion batteries. This applies not only to phones, but to any gadgets in general. The designers' task is to implement safety measures that minimize the likelihood of fire, although it is impossible to reduce it to zero.
In practice, such explosions of Li-Ion batteries are rare, but they occur regularly. According to official statistics from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, since 2002 there have been 43 recalls of products from the market due to defective lithium-ion batteries. The story with the Galaxy Note 7 is not some extraordinary story at all, but a completely ordinary technical problem.
As in the case of the notorious suicides at the Foxconn plant, the law of large numbers applies here. Remember what it was like at Foxconn factories, allegedly because of poor working conditions? From January to May 2010, 10 suicides occurred at the Foxconn plant in Taiwan. There was a buzz that poor Chinese were sacrificing their lives to assemble iPhone and iPad equipment. They say that working 12 hours a day for $150 a month is unbearable, people can’t stand it and commit suicide. But everything looks completely different if you look at the numbers. Namely, that at the Taiwanese “factory” of Foxconn, which is the world’s largest factory for the production of computer components, there were. The average suicide rate among Chinese is 14 per 100,000 people per year. Although people aged 65+ commit suicide much more often than younger people, we can therefore estimate the normal suicide rate among young people at approximately 10 per 100,000 people per year. Thus, over the past 147 days since the beginning of the year, (330,000/100,000) * 10 * 147/365 = 13.3 deaths should have occurred there. But in reality only 10 occurred, which is significantly below average.
That's all the explanation.
However, public opinion is difficult to succumb to logical arguments, so Foxconn chose not to argue, but to stop the conflict, increase wages and improve working conditions, and later announced a deal.
So what's the problem? Who is behind this hysteria with “massive” explosions of Samsung smartphones?
First, let's look at the general background when stories began to be thrown into the media. That same Galaxy Note 7, immediately after its release, was considered the best Samsung smartphone in the entire history of the company. Some called him absolutely the best smartphone On the market.
And then suddenly - a story with explosions, after which the company was forced to announce a large-scale recall of smartphones, stopping the production of Note 7 smartphones, and stopping sales. The Note 7 brand is finally buried. The “best in the world” smartphone is leaving the market forever. A complete fiasco. Absolute victory for the “unknown” enemy.
Let us immediately note that Samsung’s actions were only partly forced. They can be called “overreactions”, which risk managers recommend using in order to completely and accurately mitigate potential risks. As in the case of Foxconn, it is better to stop fighting and give up immediately than to spend years correcting the consequences of damage to the brand, especially since this damage may be irreparable. If the situation is not corrected quickly and radically, then the enemy will win not a small victory in a local battle, but a big victory in a global battle. In this case, the Samsung brand may forever be labeled as “manufacturer of exploding phones.” Over the next few years, this could lead to a significant loss of market share, a decrease in sales, and in the longer term, even to a complete abandonment of the company from producing smartphones. To ensure that this does not happen, Korean risk managers stopped the problem by giving away only “one city,” that is, the Note 7 brand alone.
Purely mathematically, it is better to be guaranteed to lose a couple of billion dollars than to have a ten percent chance of a hundred times greater losses.
In the Galaxy Note 7 model, the company has reduced the size of the smartphone and increased the battery capacity. It was obvious that this was a rather risky step.
The increased risk due to a decrease in volume and the law of large numbers still did not work in favor of the Korean corporation. Although 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7s were sold, several dozen cases of battery fires attracted very close media attention.
Apparently, Samsung has still not figured out the exact cause of the fire in smartphones, even after installing batteries from another manufacturer in them.
Who benefits from striking Samsung by stirring up a scandal? Just look at the statistics of smartphone sales in the world immediately before the release of the Galaxy Note 7.
| Company | Sales, Q1 2016 (thousands) | Market share, Q1 2016 | Sales, Q1 2015 (thousands) | Market share, Q1 2015 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Samsung | 81 186,9 | 23,2% | 81 122,8 | 24,1% |
| Apple | 51 629,5 | 14,8% | 60 177,2 | 17,9% |
| Huawei | 28 861,0 | 8,3% | 18 111,1 | 5,4% |
| Oppo | 16 112,6 | 4,6% | 6 585,1 | 2,0% |
| Xiaomi | 15 048,0 | 4,3% | 14 740,2 | 4,4% |
| Other | 156 413,4 | 44,8% | 155 561,4 | 46,3% |
| Total | 349 251,4 | 100,0% | 336 297,8 | 100,0% |
As you can see, quite unpleasant things are happening on the market for one American company with a fruit name. The first place by a large margin was secured by... guess who. That's right, Samsung. In second place is Apple, which is quite far behind. To make matters worse for the Apple company, the gap with Samsung has widened significantly over the past year. Apple sales for the year decreased from 60.2 to 51.6 million units. And this is on growing market!
What can I say, the story of the Samsung explosions could not have come at a better time.
