Samsung suspends production of Galaxy Note 7, AT&T and T-Mobile stop offering replacements
Following a recall and efforts to fix dangerous flaws with its flagship phablet Galaxy Note 7, Samsung is now said to have temporarily suspended production of the jumbo-sized handset entirely, while U.S. carriers AT&T and T-Mobile have announced they will no longer offer replacement units.
An unnamed source said to the Yonhap News Agency in South Korea that the suspension of production of the Note 7 was done in cooperation with authorities in the U.S. and China, according to CNBC.
In addition, AT&T and T-Mobile announced on Sunday they will no longer offer replacement Note 7 units to users who have potentially affected devices, according to CNN. The changes occur as reports suggest the new replacement models continue to present dangerous issues.
Earlier Sunday, reports indicated that two more Galaxy Note 7 phones had caught fire, one of the incidents sending a Kentucky man to the hospital for smoke inhalation.
Word first began to surface on Friday that AT&T was considering halting Samsung Galaxy Note 7 sales due to safety risks. Previously, replacement offers were in place from all four major U.S. carriers, under the assumption that newer models had properly addressed the flaws.
Reports have indicated that Samsung rushed the Galaxy Note 7 to market in an attempt to capitalize on what officials at the company believed was Apple's "boring" iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus update. Among the new features in the Galaxy Note 7 is a high capacity, quick-charge battery 16 percent larger than last year's Galaxy Note.
The issue has been a full-blown public relations nightmare for Samsung, forcing the company to issue a global recall for the Galaxy Note 7 just before the release of its primary competitor, the iPhone 7 Plus. Among launch units, batteries were found to potentially catch fire or even explode while charging --?an issue that may continue to exist with newly revised models.
An unnamed source said to the Yonhap News Agency in South Korea that the suspension of production of the Note 7 was done in cooperation with authorities in the U.S. and China, according to CNBC.
In addition, AT&T and T-Mobile announced on Sunday they will no longer offer replacement Note 7 units to users who have potentially affected devices, according to CNN. The changes occur as reports suggest the new replacement models continue to present dangerous issues.
Earlier Sunday, reports indicated that two more Galaxy Note 7 phones had caught fire, one of the incidents sending a Kentucky man to the hospital for smoke inhalation.
Word first began to surface on Friday that AT&T was considering halting Samsung Galaxy Note 7 sales due to safety risks. Previously, replacement offers were in place from all four major U.S. carriers, under the assumption that newer models had properly addressed the flaws.
Reports have indicated that Samsung rushed the Galaxy Note 7 to market in an attempt to capitalize on what officials at the company believed was Apple's "boring" iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus update. Among the new features in the Galaxy Note 7 is a high capacity, quick-charge battery 16 percent larger than last year's Galaxy Note.
The issue has been a full-blown public relations nightmare for Samsung, forcing the company to issue a global recall for the Galaxy Note 7 just before the release of its primary competitor, the iPhone 7 Plus. Among launch units, batteries were found to potentially catch fire or even explode while charging --?an issue that may continue to exist with newly revised models.
Comments
So where are all the class action lawsuits?
The problem is Apple almost never acknowledges a problem until sued in court and forced to. Three 2011 MacBook pro is one example.
Other companies are not like that. I had an issue with a Garmin product that is well known and when I called customer service long after the year warranty was up they said they knew of the issue and replaced it for free with the newer more advanced model. No company can make perfect products but Apple's refusal to acknowledge issues thousands are having does then no credit.
If Samsung does the right thing their sales will recover. Step one is admitting that they didn't fix the root cause of the problem and pulling the cord to stop production until the problem is resolved. This is exactly what any quality driven organization does, so let's see what Samsung does next. They can't afford three strikes on this issue.
Most, if not all companies will not acknowledge a problem unless it's coming from multiple independent sources. Take the Tesla battery fires, and the earlier Sony Battery recall as examples where the product might work for a long period of time before a problem caused by how it's used creates the dangerous situation.
Compare that with Ford's Pinto gas tank, the car industry on the whole's airbag replacement (which spans more than 10 years worth of vehicles from nearly every manufacturer), the Whirlpool dishwasher fires, where the companies simply refused to acknowledge there was a problem and had to be sued. These were products known the be faulty, but continued to be sold.
You're unlikely to see the recalls for non-dangerous defects because the Apple iphone 6 touch disease and the 2011 Macbook GPU failures, the problems only start to show up at the mid-point of the product's expected life cycle of 3 years (for the phone) or (7 for the laptop.) Apple is not the only company that waits until there are repeated reports.
Various Chinese (Taiwan) brands like MSI have a really poor record of product reliability, and that is because reliability tends to scale inversely with popularity. Korean brands are no better. LG and Samsung have never recalled their flip phone products, despite nearly every single one of them failing to work on AT&T's original GSM rollout. Many US brands simply license white-label versions of the very same products and when that happens to be a popular brand, customers aren't aware that the same device is being sold under 30 some brands in the US.
Just imagine if toy and costume-jewelry companies recalled products every time they found lead or cadmium in their china-produced goods, they'd go out of business.
It's not defensible to just go "it's just business" and pay for any potential lawsuits, but to basically go "Apple is the only company..." is a fat out lie. You're not going to see a company recall an entire line of products if the defects aren't a safety issue, because sometimes those defects only affect products on X day of the week when Y had a shift, and Y sucked at doing their job.
It would be great if there was just a universal database that people could plug serial numbers into and find out of their product is still safe to use.
Wow! Back to the drawing board with that irreparable POS.
I continued to be confused by these "incremental" vs. "major" improvements viewpoints. The 7 series has received a brand new, faster, 4-core CPU; vastly improved camera, with telephoto on the Plus model; a screen that produces "perfect" colours, etc. What "major" upgrades are people expecting from a device that already sets the benchmark for the entire industry?
We all complain about how slowly Apple rolls out upgrades, but there's one good thing — clearly they do their due diligence in safety testing. Do they catch every flaw? No, but do they ensure the product is not going to blow up in someone's hands? Yes.
First off, what does you being an Apple shareholder have to do with anything?
Second, its more than just getting a replacement. People were told to power down and not use their devices. You think everyone has a spare phone lying around they can use while waiting for that replacement? Not all carriers were offering loaner phones while waiting, and people who ordered from Samsung online (direct) had no way to arrange for a loaner. Further, people who ordered online were inconvenienced even more since couriers (like FedEx) wouldn't allow old Note 7's to be shipped back by air. This caused additional delays.
You think people are going to individually sue Samsung for their inconvenience? Why don't Apple users with so-called touch disease individually sue Apple? Simple. It would cost far more to go to court than the few hundred dollars they would get. This has class action written all over it.
"Just now got this. I can try and slow him down if we think it will matter, or we just let him do what he keeps threatening to do and see if he does it"
Well, do you think people should sue Apple if iPhone 7 takes longer to produce?
its sickening.