S7 edge exploded within 2 weeks of normal use.

[Harry Dunn]

Hah just saw this on Fox news.... Here we go!

 

[juliesdroidsync]

Let's try this one time to put things into perspective.

There were 2.5 million Note 7s shipped worldwide. Worldwide being North America, Korean and China (with Taiwan, and we can discuss whether Taiwan is China in another thread). The rollout had just started. We don't have any numbers outside of the US, so we will use US statistics that Samsung has acknowledged as being correct.

The first batch of phones had about 700,000 Note 7 phones in users hands. Samsung says 90% of those were returned. The second batch had between 300,000 and 500,000 phones in user hands. We'll go easy here and round the number higher that it could be and say that's 1,200,000 Note 7 phones in total that were in the hands of people using them in the US. Some people used both the old and the new, and that's counting them twice.

(note (no pun intended) these sales figures are not publicly stated and were given to me with the understanding that we don't talk about where they came from. But there are other trusted members here at AC who have the same numbers from different sources. I am certain they are true).

Let's round all the figures so we can make this easy. The point will be exactly the same.

We had about 100 incidents of "extreme battery failure" out of 1,000,000 phones. That is 0.01%.

Lets say we had 100 incidents of Galaxy S7 phones. Lets go with the low estimate that 30,000,000 were sold. That is 0.00033%

We can go one step further because iPhone 6 models have exploded. There were about 100,000,000 of them sold. 100 explosions would be 0.000099%

All of these are tiny numbers. But the Note 7 has a failure rate that is thousands of times greater than either the Galaxy S7 or the iPhone 6.

All phones have the potential to explode. Including the one in your pocket right now. The same goes for RC cars, vape pens, smart watches and anything else with a lithium based battery. The tech has an inherent danger. A lot of work has been done to limit the danger, and for the most part it works. But when a product has a rate of failure that wildly outside of the normal range, you can not ignore it.

Until 10,000 or more Galaxy S7 phones explode, you can't compare the scenario with the Note 7.


Maybe every Note 7 that didn't explode is perfectly safe. Maybe not. That's not the point. There was something about the phone, whether a manufacturing defect, a software bug (my guess), or bad batteries that made it unsafe in general.

There is no evidence that the Galaxy S7 or any other Samsung product has the same issue.

Your logic is flawless... all other things being equal.

But I don't think all other things are equal...

That's where my tinfoil hat comes in, and I'm not the only one that is thinking along these lines...

People nowadays are ridiculously prone to wanting to make a quick buck. I personally believe that a large percentage, maybe even the majority of these "instances" stem from people intentionally dropping/damaging or otherwise attempting to make their phones catch fire or worse... You give me any phone, and I bet you I can figure out a way make it catch fire. I bet any of us could.

Heck, if I was Apple or LG or Motorola, I'd pay people to do it because the Note 7 was, *IMO* so far ahead of the competition this year that no one else had a chance. What better way to take them down a notch or two...?

And people, please... Don't think that stuff like this doesn't happen all the time. If you believe that it doesn't, you're crazier than me! LOL

So, IF true, that "thousands of times more likely" statistic goes up in smoke, doesn't it? (pun intended...)

So, why do I think this???

2 reasons...

1.) Human nature is fallen. People do rotten things like this all the time for money and attention.
2.) Samsung has really, really smart people. People that make the smartest of us look like Neanderthals. And I'm not saying the folks on here are stupid! Not at all. (I personally have a degree in electronics engineering technology, albeit from some time ago.) The people on here are typically smarter than average by far, IMO. Most people could care less about any of the things we all love talking about here. And they can't reproduce it? I bet they will reproduce it when they start damaging their phones first to get it to happen...

3.) I do sort of have a weak, 3rd reason... The news media jumped on Sammy hard when there were just a very few incidents... not so much with Apple... jus' sayin'. this is just flat out suspicious to me.

Anyway, do appreciate your insight and opinions; I share your opinions for the most part... but some aspects of this whole thing just do. not. add. up. to the logical mind. <she adjusts her tinfoil hat once more...>

I do love the discussion! Thanks!

 

[edubb256]

I personally believe that a large percentage, maybe even the majority of these "instances" stem from people intentionally dropping/damaging or otherwise attempting to make their phones catch fire or worse... You give me any phone, and I bet you I can figure out a way make it catch fire. I bet any of us could.

I agree it is not at all difficult to trigger a thermal runaway (fire) in a phone's lithium-ion battery, on demand. However, it is not that easy to do it in a way that could not be detected by a smart battery engineer conducting an investigation of the cause of the fire. Samsung had a number of the burnt phones that they analyzed. If a significant number were result of damage or sabotage by the consumer, I think Samsung would have caught that in their analysis of the phones. They must have been pretty sure after analyzing the burnt phones, that it was not damage or sabotage by the consumer or they would not have done the recalls.

But since none of us has any idea what the cause is, we are free to indulge in speculation . Another variation on your theory that I think is more likely is sabotage by an employee, perhaps disgruntled or paid by a competitor to sabotage a couple hundred units. This would make it extremely difficult to identify the cause as the saboteur could have kept the bad units out of the test phase. Samsung has not been able to replicate the problem, perhaps it is because only a small number of units were sabotaged.

Anyway I obviously have no idea. Given than Samsung is getting back hundreds of thousands to phones to test, they will have ample opportunity to figure out the cause and exactly how widespread it is.

 

[Fit24]

I understand the concern of some people, but I will continue to use my phone as I normally do.

 

[Jerry Hildenbrand]

Your logic is flawless... all other things being equal.

But I don't think all other things are equal...

But what we think has no bearing on facts.

 

[juliesdroidsync]

But what we think has no bearing on facts.

That's kind of my point though... the facts are not in. If they were, this whole story would make a whole lot more sense.

Put another way, where there's smoke, there's fire... ( sorry, I couldn't resist that one!)

Only time will tell to see if the story's going to take some interesting turns when all of the facts are in...

 

[juliesdroidsync]

I agree it is not at all difficult to trigger a thermal runaway (fire) in a phone's lithium-ion battery, on demand. However, it is not that easy to do it in a way that could not be detected by a smart battery engineer conducting an investigation of the cause of the fire. Samsung had a number of the burnt phones that they analyzed. If a significant number were result of damage or sabotage by the consumer, I think Samsung would have caught that in their analysis of the phones. They must have been pretty sure after analyzing the burnt phones, that it was not damage or sabotage by the consumer or they would not have done the recalls.

But since none of us has any idea what the cause is, we are free to indulge in speculation . Another variation on your theory that I think is more likely is sabotage by an employee, perhaps disgruntled or paid by a competitor to sabotage a couple hundred units. This would make it extremely difficult to identify the cause as the saboteur could have kept the bad units out of the test phase. Samsung has not been able to replicate the problem, perhaps it is because only a small number of units were sabotaged.

Anyway I obviously have no idea. Given than Samsung is getting back hundreds of thousands to phones to test, they will have ample opportunity to figure out the cause and exactly how widespread it is.

Maybe, maybe not. If Samsung thought it was sabotage, they had no way to know how many phones were sabotaged and would have gone ahead and done the recall anyway, right?

And some people were not turning their phones over to Samsung after they caught fire... That is suspicious in and of itself.

But back to the sabotage Theory... What would they have said? Oh, it's sabotage so we don't have to do a recall!

No, probably not. As a matter of fact, the fact that they did the recall so quickly and voluntarily kind of makes you wonder if the theory about sabotage was right and they knew it all along.

But like you said, it's all conjecture. The facts are not all in. I think it's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out. Guess only time will tell.

Thanks for the input... Love the discussion! Gets my mind off of the election for a while

 

[Bbarbie]

Two Galaxy S7 edge units have exploded recently. One incident took place in Canada, according to Android Headlines. The other explosion happened to a phone that belonged to an employee of a major US carrier, Phone Arena reports.

The Canadian unit caught fire while the owner was driving home from work. The other handset exploded while it was charging overnight using the included charger. It’s unclear at this time exactly what caused either of these two explosions.

Samsung is investigating the fire in Canada, according to Yahoo.

Found above in a bgr article while many don't like that website.. again just an fyi..

 

[KPMcClave]

Two Galaxy S7 edge units have exploded recently. One incident took place in Canada, according to Android Headlines. The other explosion happened to a phone that belonged to an employee of a major US carrier, Phone Arena reports.

The Canadian unit caught fire while the owner was driving home from work. The other handset exploded while it was charging overnight using the included charger. It’s unclear at this time exactly what caused either of these two explosions.

Samsung is investigating the fire in Canada, according to Yahoo.

Found above in a bgr article while many don't like that website.. again just an fyi..

...and the rest of the article there says just about exactly the same thing people have been saying in this thread. That you shouldn't freak out, and that any phone can potentially catch fire and the S7E isn't doing that at a rate that should be a concern compared to any other phone.

New Galaxy S7 edge explosions reported | BGR

 

[amyf27]

I'm sorry but I'm highly skeptical about any of these reports.

 

[Bbarbie]

No I fully agree at this point I feel these reports are pure sabotage and Samsung hasn't found the rat yet.

 

[LeoRex]

No, probably not. As a matter of fact, the fact that they did the recall so quickly and voluntarily kind of makes you wonder if the theory about sabotage was right and they knew it all along.

But like you said, it's all conjecture. The facts are not all in. I think it's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out. Guess only time will tell.

Thanks for the input... Love the discussion! Gets my mind off of the election for a while

There is absolutely zero evidence of any sabotage, subterfuge, malfeasance or rapscallionry anywhere in this story. I'm applying Occam's Razor... Company releases a faulty product, all hell breaks loose, and through some combination of pressure to act fast/decisive and the hubris of being sure they found any and all problems, release a replacement product that still happens to fail. There was no media plot, or unnecessary recall launch to appease the public. Stuff happens sometimes. Now, back to the S7 Edge... like Jerry points out, the S7 has been around for going on 8 months now, and there have been failures, like there have been iPhone failures, Tesla failures, etc.. Note 7 fans can't point to sporadic stories of S7 or iPhone failures as justification that their phones' safety was overblown... doing so is a simple case of false equivalence.

 

[juliesdroidsync]

There is absolutely zero evidence of any sabotage, subterfuge, malfeasance or rapscallionry anywhere in this story. I'm applying Occam's Razor... Company releases a faulty product, all hell breaks loose, and through some combination of pressure to act fast/decisive and the hubris of being sure they found any and all problems, release a replacement product that still happens to fail. There was no media plot, or unnecessary recall launch to appease the public. Stuff happens sometimes. Now, back to the S7 Edge... like Jerry points out, the S7 has been around for going on 8 months now, and there have been failures, like there have been iPhone failures, Tesla failures, etc.. Note 7 fans can't point to sporadic stories of S7 or iPhone failures as justification that their phones' safety was overblown... doing so is a simple case of false equivalence.

Only time will tell... maybe there's no evidence today, but that may not be the case a week or a month from now. you make a good point though.

 

[Jerry Hildenbrand]

That's kind of my point though... the facts are not in.

So much for a rational conversation.

Hard numbers and math are facts. Neither of those will change. I'm just glad Samsung accepts responsibility better than this.

 

[juliesdroidsync]

So much for a rational conversation.

Hard numbers and math are facts. Neither of those will change. I'm just glad Samsung accepts responsibility better than this.

I guess it would have been better for me to say, "Time will tell if all the facts are in." You seem supremely confident that they are! If they are, no one can argue with your logic.

(And I don't think Samsung would get off the hook regardless of the cause, btw... it's still their phone. Fault and responsibility are not the same thing, after all. Regardless of who/what is at fault, it is still their responsibility - no getting around that.)

...so much for an open-minded conversation... <deep sigh>

 

[edubb256]

As has been said, none of us knows the cause. There is no inherent conflict between discussing opinions and rational conversation.

Given recent reports that Samsung also does not yet know the cause, and cannot reproduce the problem, I expect they are conducting an open-minded,comprehensive investigation that includes a range of possibilities including design flaws, problems with manufacturing process, human error, or sabotage.

 

[juliesdroidsync]

As has been said, none of us knows the cause. There is no inherent conflict between discussing opinions and rational conversation.

Given recent reports that Samsung also does not yet know the cause, and cannot reproduce the problem, I expect they are conducting an open-minded,comprehensive investigation that includes a range of possibilities including design flaws, problems with manufacturing process, human error, or sabotage.

Thank you!

Because the *fact* that some of the best minds on the planet in this industry cannot come up with an explanation is a strong indication that all the *facts* are not yet in...

 

[troshs]

I for one wanted the Note 7 BAD. I finally settled with the S7E because of having a helluva time getting the N7 and my previous phone was taking a crap (all I'm saying is LG G4). If this one gets recalled I have no idea who I'll go with as I am not an iPhone fan by any means. I'm waiting for Samsung to drop the official word on what the hell happen but I fear that we won't get that either.

 

[ThrottleJohnny]

Right. I love how people can say what it definitely is not, but can only guess at what it is.

Samsung has released millions of Notes, and several different variations of this phone. Why now? Why this one? What's different about the way this one was created?

 

[jeetu4444]

Using my S7 Edge since april...zero issues...i think people are just spoiling the name of samsung on purpose...or they are being paid by other brands...i find funny that a phone that is out for 7 months is having issues suddenly after the note 7 issue...
Iam really happy with my s7 edge and we have 2 in our family