Absent a recall, would you have returned your Note 7 due to the reported issues?

[Aquila]

The CPSC numbers are a low end estimate of cases in the United States between the dates they reported on. So it's 96 + 28 + X, with X being the sum of all those that took place between the 96 and 28 (approximately 3 weeks) and all those that took place after the 28 were reported (approx 8 days ago). So there are 4 weeks of data not included in those numbers, and those are only cases brought to the attention of the CPSC in the US.

 

[1213 1213]

This is such a wrong metric to go by it's crazy that you would even bring it up. It is wholly dependent on aggregate failures relative to the shipped volume. Not to mention that it is not backed up by any form of substantiated proof. You don't know how many devices were failing or at what frequency. Nobody does except Samsung. Samsung had to contain brand damage, that's it.

You seem to be assuming there are safe devices and unsafe devices. But we don't know that. It may be that all phones are unsafe with a low failure record. Which means it isn't a case of if the device is going to blow, but when. Which is obviously very different, even if statistically speaking it is still unlikely to blow.

 

[Aquila]

This whole fiasco is all about saving face and protecting the brand. If it weren't for the massive sharing of the stories about Note7s going up in flames a recall never would have happened because brand damage would be minimal.

Just to illustrate how crazy this whole thing has gotten, at the time of the recall being issued, you were equally likely to die from Parkinson's disease as you were to have your Note 7 catch on fire. Nay, you were more likely to die of Parkinson's disease than your Note 7 catching on fire because I assumed 200 units were faulty for a total of 2,500,000 shipped (if you count the "safe" variants that went out the denominator also goes up higher, making the % probability of failure even lower).

Some stats on odds of dying... The Odds of Dying

You have a point, but the denominator is less than 500k for your 200, but that doesn't change the number by very much.

 

[Kalious]

Something is odd about this whole recall and I'm sure we will figure it out eventually. I'm extremely bummed out. The Note 7 was a near perfect phone in my opinion. I LOVED IT. I'm not near as happy with my s7e, and it sucks because I miss my Note 7 every time I use the damn thing.

The edges are too pronounced and my hands are just too damn big for this phone. I had finally found a phone that fit nicely in my hands. Hell, even the case I purchased, which is the same exact case I got for my Note sucks. I'm thinking about returning this phone.

 

[NotAnAppleGuy]

The argument of "I'm keeping it and I'm alone in assuming the risk" is only valid if one lives alone, works alone, and never goes anywhere or lived in a home without shared tenants or people around them - like stores, apartment buildings.

Unless that's you, you are choosing to risk everyone around you. Over something as stupid as a cell phone.

By all means, take the risk...but don't act surprised when someone around you who doesn't want to take that risk voices their displeasure.

Funny you say that. I have ALWAYS fueled my vehicles while it was running (sign says to turn off vehicle) and I have always talked on my phone (sign says no phone use while fueling) since cell phones came into existence.

My point is- after 20 plus years of sticking a metal nozzle that dispenses fuel into a metal receptacle that stores fuel, while having a heat source (running car) and talking on a cellular phone (static discharge), I'm suprised to say that I am still here.

I simply refuse to believe that this phone has a better chance of exploding than me causing an explosion at a fuel station or catching the zika virus from mosquitos. Rolling the dice on my replacement until the N8 releases.

 

[LeoRex]

Something is odd about this whole recall and I'm sure we will figure it out eventually. I'm extremely bummed out.

Oh, that's the thing... I agree with you 100%. I got a Note 7 to replace my wife's S7 (which was, from my perspective as her de facto tech support, an utter hot mess)... and she really liked it. Nice big screen, excellent battery performance, great camera... it finally checked off all the boxes that she needed in a phone... except one : "do not catch on fire"

So I was as frustrated as everyone else since I thought I had finally found, after a good... 4 years of searching... a phone that didn't cause ME grief and dirty looks because it didn't do what she needed or did something stupid....

When I read about that SW flight thing, I hoped with all my might that this was just a case of crap luck and it was just one of those 'it happens' failures that we see with these batteries. And for a few days, I thought it was a false alarm... then more reports came in... then Samsung saying "HOLD UP!"... to the second, final recall and the DOT/FAA....

 

[dejanh]

You have a point, but the denominator is less than 500k for your 200, but that doesn't change the number by very much.

Just a quick correction, it is not 500k, it is north of 2.5 million worldwide. You can't look at US numbers only. If you do that then the Note7 should have never been recalled in Canada since the failure rate is, well, zero.

You seem to be assuming there are safe devices and unsafe devices. But we don't know that. It may be that all phones are unsafe with a low failure record. Which means it isn't a case of if the device is going to blow, but when. Which is obviously very different, even if statistically speaking it is still unlikely to blow.

None of them blow and all of them can catch on fire, Note7 or any other one. You're carrying a highly combustible object in your pocket, but the likelihood of it failing under normal use over the lifespan of the device is very low. You're going back to the definition of "unsafe" and the threshold at which something is deemed "unsafe". A "safe" product with a high failure record is inherently "unsafe" I'm not disputing that the Note7 was less safe than some of the other brands that we're familiar with. They could be equally safe as some cheap Chinese brands though, who knows. Either way, mass hysteria got to Samsung and it bit the Note7 in the rear end. The fact that it is taking Samsung this long to even reproduce a problem shows you that this is probably a very specific combination of factors that causes the issue and not a systemic failure in the design. It could be that the failure is in design though just brought on by a specific chain of events that lead up to it. Again, that does not make it systemic.

 

[Aquila]

Just a quick correction, it is not 500k, it is north of 2.5 million worldwide. You can't look at US numbers only. If you do that then the Note7 should have never been recalled in Canada since the failure rate is, well, zero.

I used that because the 200ish that you cited seems to be a US-centric number, since over 120 were referenced by the CPSC in the US. And the 2.5 million was shipments, not sales - at the onset of all of this they said that less than half were in consumer hands, so 1.25 mill was the initial global maximum.

 

[Jude526]

It's dangerous to keep the phone. Being stubborn is being stupid. It's like smoking.. Dangerous to your health.. But ppl still smoke.
Ppl who keep this phone are putting ppl at risk besides themselves.. Like 2nd hand smoke.
Only dumping the phone has no withdrawal! It will be crippled. You won't be able to use it.
I for one took no chances.. Yes I loved the phone but not to the point of risking harm to myself or others.
Too bad the 7edge is not being checked out.. Runs extremely hot...

Got the Note 5. Like it a lot and I am confident it will do well for me

 

[dejanh]

I used that because the 200ish that you cited seems to be a US-centric number, since over 120 were referenced by the CPSC in the US. And the 2.5 million was shipments, not sales - at the onset of all of this they said that less than half were in consumer hands, so 1.25 mill was the initial global maximum.

Everything that was produced is at risk, unless you're now saying that this failure is related to using the phone, which I think we were all told is not the case since phones were spontaneously combusting. 96 failures in the US, zero in Canada, I also think zero in Australia, and a handful of cases in Korea, Taiwan, and China. 2.5 million were sold worldwide (quick Google search confirms). So yeah, you're looking at pretty low numbers of failed devices overall. If you extrapolated from US incidents as a sample, then you should expect that on average you should have 2 failed units per 10,000 sold in any given market but you aren't seeing that. In fact, you have less recorded failures worldwide for the remaining 2 million devices than total number of devices that failed in the us with 1/4 of sales. Even if we say that globally the failures were under-reported by a factor of 2, that would still indicate a higher than normal failure rate in the US and a relatively low failure rate elsewhere. If you exclude the US even adjusted for a factor of 2 of under-reporting you are not getting more than 0.005% failure rate. It would be good to know what is the acceptable failure rate for these devices (I saw the industry figures somewhere, but I cannot find them now).

Note that I am not arguing for or against the recall. Just playing with some numbers to understand the "scale" of this issue.

It's dangerous to keep the phone. Being stubborn is being stupid. It's like smoking.. Dangerous to your health.. But ppl still smoke.
Ppl who keep this phone are putting ppl at risk besides themselves.. Like 2nd hand smoke.
Only dumping the phone has no withdrawal! It will be crippled. You won't be able to use it.
I for one took no chances.. Yes I loved the phone but not to the point of risking harm to myself or others.
Too bad the 7edge is not being checked out.. Runs extremely hot...

Got the Note 5. Like it a lot and I am confident it will do well for me

Driving is dangerous for your health and health of others. Please don't sit in the car today. Look, I get your point but you cannot pick and choose when you want to apply logic.

 

[LeoRex]

Driving is dangerous.

Yep... And we have several regulatory bodies working every day to reduce that risk. But if a car had 100+ incidents of fires in the first month after launch, the NTSB and DOT would be on that in a heartbeat.

 

[jgraves1107]

It's dangerous to keep the phone. Being stubborn is being stupid. It's like smoking.. Dangerous to your health.. But ppl still smoke.
Ppl who keep this phone are putting ppl at risk besides themselves.. Like 2nd hand smoke.
Only dumping the phone has no withdrawal! It will be crippled. You won't be able to use it.
I for one took no chances.. Yes I loved the phone but not to the point of risking harm to myself or others.
Too bad the 7edge is not being checked out.. Runs extremely hot...

Got the Note 5. Like it a lot and I am confident it will do well for me

GMO foods are dangerous and cause more illness and death yet they are still being used in this country. At some point you have to realize when it's your time to go it's your time to go. Now if I get taken out by a cell phone that is going to be one for the record books. My wife says keep it I keep it. She knows the risk and thinks it's overexposed media hype. Non the less I will keep it located in its safe zone away from potential fire starters like say the magnetic phone holder on my Harley gas tank. Can't say you are at risk if it's at my house in a glass Pyrex dish.

 

[Aquila]

2.5 million were sold worldwide (quick Google search confirms).

That's how many Samsung sold. Samsung sells those devices to the retailers, who then resell them to us consumers. The term we typically use is shipments. At the onset of the issues Samsung stated that less than half of the shipments had made it to consumers (in the context that this was a good thing because it meant that they weren't powered on and were not a threat to the public).

As far as the issues in countries that are not the US, we have no idea because Samsung has not told us. The media in the US latched on to a handful of stories, but each time there were at least 3 times the global number of alleged cases confirmed to be in the US only. Since the not-US sales were 150% of the US sales, we can reasonably estimate that there are probably more non-US issues than US issues. That's not proof that there is, but a random count of reports that made it to national news in the US is a bad metric, since we know it's at least 200% wrong and can safely assume it's at least 500% wrong.

But these particulars don't matter, since we're just comparing fractions of a percent of even the 1.25 million devices resold to consumers, let alone the full 2.5 million that existed. It'd take 12,500 confirmed cases that could definitively be stated to be caused by defects and not damage or abuse for it to even be 1%. And that 12,500 probably didn't happen.

 

[dejanh]

Yep... And we have several regulatory bodies working every day to reduce that risk. But if a car had 100+ incidents of fires in the first month after launch, the NTSB and DOT would be on that in a heartbeat.

You can't take a portion of my statement and quote it taking away the context. Here is the full thing in response to a comment comparing phones that can catch on fire to second hand smoke.

Driving is dangerous for your health and health of others. Please don't sit in the car today. Look, I get your point but you cannot pick and choose when you want to apply logic.

Anyway, I think I've contributed what I can for now

 

[kevinpleasants]

CPSC reported the figure at 96 failed Note 7s in the United States alone... 13 of which caused burns, 47 of which caused property damage. This isn't hearsay or media hype, or an unsubstantiated figure. And these are just the cases that they the CPSC was called in.

Some were proven to note be Note 7s. The media and those who wanted to cash in, cause harm to Samsung because the Note 7 was so far rated the best phone of 2016 and how dare you outdo Apple, I've followed all the stories and claims and it was a ridiculous thing to take place. Because of the ongoing so called explosions Samsung made a good business decision to do a final recall. But that doesn't mean there is a problem with the Note 7. People tend to believe whatever the media reports even though they are wrong and spin stories for ratings. Notice how the reports have stopped since Samsung stopped production and announced the final recall? Wonder why Samsung can't reproduce the so called explosions? Because there's nothing wrong with the mass majority of the phones.

 

[kevinpleasants]

It's dangerous to keep the phone. Being stubborn is being stupid. It's like smoking.. Dangerous to your health.. But ppl still smoke.
Ppl who keep this phone are putting ppl at risk besides themselves.. Like 2nd hand smoke.
Only dumping the phone has no withdrawal! It will be crippled. You won't be able to use it.
I for one took no chances.. Yes I loved the phone but not to the point of risking harm to myself or others.
Too bad the 7edge is not being checked out.. Runs extremely hot...

Got the Note 5. Like it a lot and I am confident it will do well for me

Where did you read that they're gonna be crippled?

 

[Aquila]

Some were proven to note be Note 7s.

Some of the reports as reported by the media; not some of the reports confirmed by Samsung and the CPSC joint investigation. Surely Samsung can tell the difference between their own devices?

Do you actually believe there is a concerted effort by the media at large to sabotage any particular device because of a bias towards another device?

 

[dejanh]

Some of the reports as reported by the media; not some of the reports confirmed by Samsung and the CPSC joint investigation. Surely Samsung can tell the difference between their own devices?

Do you actually believe there is a concerted effort by the media at large to sabotage any particular device because of a bias towards another device?

Bias is likely real, but I agree with you that there is no concerted effort by the media to bring down Samsung. Samsung brought the hurt on themselves because of a lousy approach to the recall. Good start, terrible execution and finish.

 

[Aquila]

Bias is likely real, but I agree with you that there is no concerted effort by the media to bring down Samsung. Samsung brought the hurt on themselves because of a lousy approach to the recall. Good start, terrible execution and finish.

I would agree fully that there is a bias towards drama. They see a wounded animal and jump right on to get the clicks generated by the drama. It's unfortunate, but that's how terrible not-really-journalism media works. Also agree, it was an awesome device off to a great start with reviews, sales, etc. and almost everyone I've seen comment about it loved it. I wanted one too but passed because of some unrelated stuff.

 

[ggrr8t]

NO! See...that was simple.