Interesting that the batteries are developing an internal short.
BTW I reckon the reason Samsung are recalling the stock is to limit their liability. The cost of making one of these will be c. £30 so this isn’t too bad.
I keep anything with a big battery within reach in the cockpit – not in the luggage compartment – and carry a fireproof bag to chuck it into. And a procedure to slow down and chuck it out of the window if necessary…
I wonder what Samsung did that’s so different. This tablet is not especially thin. Also I find Samsung stuff runs a lot less hot than say my Lenovo T2 tablet. In fact the T705 is the only tablet I cannot make shut down in the air no matter what I do.
Peter wrote:
BTW I reckon the reason Samsung are recalling the stock is to limit their liability. The cost of making one of these will be c. £30 so this isn’t too bad.
Yes. But I can’t understand why they trash them. Replacing the batteries with safe ones would cost maybe 10$ per unit. That’s still 20$ cheaper than to trash them even if only the production cost is considered.
Peter wrote:
…and carry a fireproof bag to chuck it into.
We have an oven glove on board and a LiPo safe bag which is big enough to hold an iPad. If it keeps smoking inside that bag, we will put the whole bag in an empty catering box and pour water, coffee, beer, ice cubes and whatever is on hand inside. I think most airlines have similar procedures.
Peter wrote:
I wonder what Samsung did that’s so different.
I think their batteries have a lot more “power density” than those of the competition. From my company I have an iPhone and privately I have one from Samsung (because it cost less than 1/4 of the iPhone). They have more or less the same size, mass, specifications and functions. Only that the iPhone needs to be charged every day and the Samsung phone maybe twice per week.
But I can’t understand why they trash them
A symbolic statement of responsibility, perhaps, perhaps a cultural thing down there?
Maybe there is a charging issue also, in which case they would need to replace the whole PCB and then there is little left.
IME I don’t find battery life on Samsungs any better. 1 day on the S6 and S7 and the T705. Maybe the older ones were better. But a lot of battery life is the OS software. The phone forums are full of people complaining that their Brand X phone now has a battery life of 2 hours after the latest OTA update 
On my S7, TomTom (satnav) crashes it and makes it get really hot, and it takes several hard reboots to make the phone usable again. TT have said this is a known issue… really great!
If they simply changed the battery who would buy a Note 7NG? The model is tainted so probably best to ditch it.
Peter wrote:
The cost of making one of these will be c. £30
You’re way off there. The manufacturing cost will be around $250 – $300
Parts cost?
That’s (or more accurately the ex factory cost i.e. parts plus direct labour) what matters if you are scrapping finished stock.
Start at the retail price and work backwards through the reseller chain, and then take the parts cost as being about 30% of the ex-Samsung selling price.
A GTX330 is about $200, for example.
It’s funny that I have a Samsung S7 but was never even aware that there was a Note S7. The S7 works fine, though with poor 3rd party app support (quite a few don’t work – a lot of vendors seem to have given up on droid v6).
Peter wrote:
I wonder what Samsung did that’s so different.
Fierce competition among the manufacturers of smartphones with respect to battery life, connectivity features, weight and size.
The lighter, longer lasting and thinner, the better. Which brings competition down to the “real” manufacturers, i.e. Foxconn et al. Most of them Chines, South Korean, Japanese. The component suppliers compete for the best supply contract. Which means, you offer a special battery to Samsung so they can have an edge against Apple, Sony and the others, they’re gonna take it.
For example, Foxconn, who basically assembles the iPhone, sources the components just as everyone else. The displays for Apple devices are coming from Samsung, for example, through some distributors so that Apple doesn’t have to list Samsung on their suppliers list. And so on and so forth. These things are crammed with electronics, and weight improvements are predominately achieved by making the batteries and the displays lighter.
So, somewhere along the sourcing process one of the battery manufacturers must have f*cked up. As in not having applied the adequate quality control, or overpromising. Lithium Ion Technology seems to be pretty much stretched to its technological and physical limits. We need another chemistry base which allow for more energy on the same amount of space. Battery technology does not follow Moore’s law. Electronic Circuit’s sizes are essentially a function of printing resolution. Batteries are a function of energy density on a molecular level. That’s why they blow up. Until someone invents an altogether different chemistry. There are a couple of them currently in the scientific making and batteries will improve over time. A quantum leap is not likely soon.
stevelup wrote:
You’re way off there. The manufacturing cost will be around $250 – $300
If that was really the case, I wonder even more why they didn’t replace the faulty batteries and parts of the charging circuit (if that is part of the problem). A “patch” of some kind could certainly be wired between the battery and the PCB without further modifications. And regarding the “The model is tainted so probably best to ditch it.” bit, they could just rename the repaired units as Note 8 and sell them even more expensive than before…
That would have been pretty stupid. First of all, they did try to replace the faulty units first, and were proven wrong because they still blew up. And just changing the name doesn’t mean a bit because any analyst worth his salt would have realized that in a heartbeat. That would have been leaked seconds after the decision. The damage for Samsungs public image is a desaster already. The only thing they could do in order to save face was to ditch the whole thing.
EuroFlyer wrote:
The damage for Samsungs public image is a desaster already. The only thing they could do in order to save face was to ditch the whole thing.
But with the same reasoning you could say Volkswagen should just trash every Diesel car built during the last years instead of just replacing the ROM which contains the motor software…
