There should be software and circuitry that shuts down a device long before sizzling...heat dissipation should be monitorable. This is a runaway malfunction...
Recently I left my iPhone outside on a sunny day. When I picked it up an emergency warning was displayed informing me the device was too hot to use. Not until the software/hardware decided the iPhone was safe to use again did the warning go away and I could use the iPhone.
Two former Samsung employees told the New York Times that corporate culture is "militaristic," specifically that orders trickled down from the top, altered by upper and middle management along the way. Compounding the problem, decisions surrounding the recall and investigation were made by executives who didn't necessarily understand the underlying technologies involved.
"It didn't take many years for Nokia to tumble from its position as the world's top cellphone maker" -- Chosun Ilbo, South Korea's largest newspaper
After a very brief examination, Samsung decided to recall the Galaxy Note 7 phones with the Samsung SDI batteries, because of demonstrated pinching near rounded corners and defects in insulating tape. For the replacements, Samsung shifted entirely to Amperex Technology batteries, which presumably didn't have the same shortcomings.
No, why Nokia fumbled was because they were too entrenched in their "dumbphone" market that and didn't believe users wanted a smartphone until it was way too late and Symbian wasn't flexible enough to do it, despite they probably could have pulled it off since they had other smartphone-like devices that were closer to the blackberry before. The irony is that Microsoft was actually the leader in "smartphones" before that was even a thing. Apple just capitalized on how utterly poor those Windows Mobile devices were, with them trying to do everything with a button, or tap on a screen that only recognized one input. Hell Microsoft actually went in the wrong direction, because that "everything with the start button" thing was a late development before Blackberry really started to take off. Microsoft had a mobile operating system that was actually finger-friendly, and they threw it away in favor of a cheaper no-touch-screen model.
My hope here is that some regulations come down the pipe regarding batteries large enough to ignite, that they have a physical "kill switch" or the battery be ejectable to ensure that the user isn't harmed, and they can be safely mailed back. Even then, if the problem is something to do with the battery internals, the battery might still spontaneously combust.
There should be software and circuitry that shuts down a device long before sizzling...heat dissipation should be monitorable. This is a runaway malfunction...
Recently I left my iPhone outside on a sunny day. When I picked it up an emergency warning was displayed informing me the device was too hot to use. Not until the software/hardware decided the iPhone was safe to use again did the warning go away and I could use the iPhone.
I've seen that personally in a relatives iPhone 6. The thing to keep in mind is that although the phone can monitor it, it doesn't necessarily mean that it can detect combustion inside the phone until after the phone is already on fire.
Samsung has a culture, as all companies do, but it's obviously not a culture that places customer safety and product integrity ahead of internal politics and corporate ego.
Anyone who's been involved with new product development has at one time or another - most likely numerous times - been faced with various forms or "motivation" to "just ship it" and/or had delivery schedules foisted upon them by business leaders well before all of the required development work, including testing, was estimated or accommodated through some other quality driven process. Some of this "motivation" comes in the form of threats and intimidation, but more often it comes in the form of someone with seniority and political clout directing the development and test team to shortchange or accelerate the testing process or to defer the testing process to the very end of the development cycle. When the deadline looms it becomes a battle between the product people trying to cram in the last few features and the test and development teams struggling to fully test the features that are still not quite 100% or inadequately tested. Things that should have been tested first at a component and unit level prior to integration and final system build get deferred to the end. This results in exactly the type of scenario playing out with the Samsung Note 7 - the system testers cannot adequately determine why the integrated system is failing because they don't have any test evidence and conformation that the unit, component, and subassemblies/subsystems were fully tested. It's a classic case of trying to cram the quality into the product after the fact rather than building the quality into the system as it is incrementally constructed, integrated, and tested.
That's my theory - inadequate underlying testing and testing too late - but only because this scenario repeats itself over and over again in product development and Samsung is obviously flailing around trying to determine the root cause failure mode(s) and has decided instead to just throw in the towel in utter and total exasperation. Deferring testing until the end is at-best the single most expensive way to attain product quality. At worst, it's an unmitigated disaster, i.e., a crash and burn outcome.
This is an epic failure from an engineering, product development, and customer relations perspective. They will either learn from this incident or they will exit this market, by one means or another. However, they are not alone and other companies have suffered similar incidents and worst incidents and learned from them and survived. To Samsung's credit or sheer dumb luck, nobody died. Yet. I sincerely hope that Samsung learns from this and changes their ways. Part of the learning process is to publicly admit what part of their quality process failed, share details with peers in industry, and demonstrate through transparent actions that they have gotten on the right path and are willing to discuss their new and improved quality and safety process with industry peers, regulators, and customers. A company publicly demonstrating or discussing how it builds quality and safety into their products in no way divulges trade secrets or reduces competitive differentiation. It simply builds customer and brand loyalty and shows that they are willing to be graded in a public sense for how well their internal development processes contribute to customer value assurance and safety. After all, if they cannot as a minimum even deliver a safe product that regulators and customers can trust it doesn't matter one iota how many gee wiz features the product has stuffed into it. Never has this been more clearly demonstrated than with the Samsung Note 7 - it's a beautiful failure.
Samsung has gotten a lot of positive reviews on how quickly they charge and how long the battery lasts in daily use. Users give it praise too. The same reviewers are quick to mention how Apple has gotten so far behind on battery capacity, quick charging, and wireless charging. Now it's a bit more obvious why those can be a bad idea if done incorrectly.
It sounds like a multifaceted failure mechanism that includes battery isolation barriers being crimped under assembly into cases. Overall compression of the battery form factor when assembled and accelerating that failure mode with heat intense rapid charging.
Just in case there was anyone within Apple questioning their conservative approach to batteries, I'm sure this will be a big fillip for the softly softly approach.
My hope here is that some regulations come down the pipe regarding batteries large enough to ignite, that they have a physical "kill switch" or the battery be ejectable to ensure that the user isn't harmed, and they can be safely mailed back. Even then, if the problem is something to do with the battery internals, the battery might still spontaneously combust.
bomb is bad (exploded battery), sling gun (eject able battery) even worse... stop weaponize the commercial product please.
Oh they *are* cultural values. Ones that are about seniority, honour (family, patriarchal), position, and saving face.
They simply don't work in this day and age when it comes to the connection between products and their customers.
It used to be this way in many of the Asian airlines, for example (still is, in some respects.) It was seen as disrespectful and otherwise improper for subordinates (like the First Officer) to question the Captain or take the controls for the greater good, even when the latter was obviously in the wrong (and sometimes dangerously so.) This resulted in bad cockpit resource management, in turn resulting in entirely preventable tragedies.
The problem is very much cultural. Not everything translates well (or safely) into the 21st century.
Please resist the urge to theorize too much regarding Asian cultures unless you have first hand experience, as in being from that culture, having lived in an Asian culture for some years or have studied Asian cultures in college. Stereotyping and blanket statements about a people leads to prejudging and distrust and we already have to much of that these days in our own culture.
still no valid explanation of why it explode? it is complicated... but can't be that complicated... something not right here. thermal runaway of various cathod materials at various temperature were studied in depth... unless something really new here.
Apple has paved the way of smartphone technology, they work hard to lead the way by developing in-house their own CPU. Of course, Apple iPhone Ax series doesn't have fancy quad or more cores like Samsung or a phablet size ambled display.
But Apple is working with a strict power budget. Size of the iPhone battery has been kept relatively the same since the first iPhone and Apple is working really hard pushing more performance with the same power budget at each iteration. This is where the competition just doesn't keep up, they need to sacrifice something to keep up with the iPhone performance while offering bigger and more power hungry display.
This is why the monstrous Galaxy Note 7 has failed, pushing the power budget of its battery to the limit.
Apple designs its own processor, and on top of that it underclocks it. Apple controls the power of the device starting with how much processing power the chip emits. Down to how the battery powers the device.
Samsung might design the parts to fit there phone. But they don't design the entire operating system. Idk if the note 7 was operating on snapdragon or a Samsung chip. Samsung has far less involvement and far less control over the overall outcome of the whole of the product than Apple does.
Apple may not make every component itself. But Apple make sure to control all the crucial and important components.
It its designs its own processsors now, it makes its own software, it owns the company that designs the cameras that go into the phone. It controls every step.
Oh they *are* cultural values. Ones that are about seniority, honour (family, patriarchal), position, and saving face.
They simply don't work in this day and age when it comes to the connection between products and their customers.
It used to be this way in many of the Asian airlines, for example (still is, in some respects.) It was seen as disrespectful and otherwise improper for subordinates (like the First Officer) to question the Captain or take the controls for the greater good, even when the latter was obviously in the wrong (and sometimes dangerously so.) This resulted in bad cockpit resource management, in turn resulting in entirely preventable tragedies.
The problem is very much cultural. Not everything translates well (or safely) into the 21st century.
Please resist the urge to theorize too much regarding Asian cultures unless you have first hand experience, as in being from that culture, having lived in an Asian culture for some years or have studied Asian cultures in college. Stereotyping and blanket statements about a people leads to prejudging and distrust and we already have to much of that these days in our own culture.
There is no theory, a plane went down because of those cultural issues and other near misses. That's what the reports showed and correctives were also in that direction. If anything, you seem to be blinded by your own bias. In western context, communication problems may still exist but be more linked to the company or a particular group, like the challenger disaster or the apolo 1 fire
and I love how they took their communications off grid to thwart legal discovery. samsung is good at this with all the times they have been raided by the equivalent of the korean fbi.
Comments
My hope here is that some regulations come down the pipe regarding batteries large enough to ignite, that they have a physical "kill switch" or the battery be ejectable to ensure that the user isn't harmed, and they can be safely mailed back. Even then, if the problem is something to do with the battery internals, the battery might still spontaneously combust.
Anyone who's been involved with new product development has at one time or another - most likely numerous times - been faced with various forms or "motivation" to "just ship it" and/or had delivery schedules foisted upon them by business leaders well before all of the required development work, including testing, was estimated or accommodated through some other quality driven process. Some of this "motivation" comes in the form of threats and intimidation, but more often it comes in the form of someone with seniority and political clout directing the development and test team to shortchange or accelerate the testing process or to defer the testing process to the very end of the development cycle. When the deadline looms it becomes a battle between the product people trying to cram in the last few features and the test and development teams struggling to fully test the features that are still not quite 100% or inadequately tested. Things that should have been tested first at a component and unit level prior to integration and final system build get deferred to the end. This results in exactly the type of scenario playing out with the Samsung Note 7 - the system testers cannot adequately determine why the integrated system is failing because they don't have any test evidence and conformation that the unit, component, and subassemblies/subsystems were fully tested. It's a classic case of trying to cram the quality into the product after the fact rather than building the quality into the system as it is incrementally constructed, integrated, and tested.
That's my theory - inadequate underlying testing and testing too late - but only because this scenario repeats itself over and over again in product development and Samsung is obviously flailing around trying to determine the root cause failure mode(s) and has decided instead to just throw in the towel in utter and total exasperation. Deferring testing until the end is at-best the single most expensive way to attain product quality. At worst, it's an unmitigated disaster, i.e., a crash and burn outcome.
This is an epic failure from an engineering, product development, and customer relations perspective. They will either learn from this incident or they will exit this market, by one means or another. However, they are not alone and other companies have suffered similar incidents and worst incidents and learned from them and survived. To Samsung's credit or sheer dumb luck, nobody died. Yet. I sincerely hope that Samsung learns from this and changes their ways. Part of the learning process is to publicly admit what part of their quality process failed, share details with peers in industry, and demonstrate through transparent actions that they have gotten on the right path and are willing to discuss their new and improved quality and safety process with industry peers, regulators, and customers. A company publicly demonstrating or discussing how it builds quality and safety into their products in no way divulges trade secrets or reduces competitive differentiation. It simply builds customer and brand loyalty and shows that they are willing to be graded in a public sense for how well their internal development processes contribute to customer value assurance and safety. After all, if they cannot as a minimum even deliver a safe product that regulators and customers can trust it doesn't matter one iota how many gee wiz features the product has stuffed into it. Never has this been more clearly demonstrated than with the Samsung Note 7 - it's a beautiful failure.
Apple has paved the way of smartphone technology, they work hard to lead the way by developing in-house their own CPU. Of course, Apple iPhone Ax series doesn't have fancy quad or more cores like Samsung or a phablet size ambled display.
But Apple is working with a strict power budget. Size of the iPhone battery has been kept relatively the same since the first iPhone and Apple is working really hard pushing more performance with the same power budget at each iteration. This is where the competition just doesn't keep up, they need to sacrifice something to keep up with the iPhone performance while offering bigger and more power hungry display.
This is why the monstrous Galaxy Note 7 has failed, pushing the power budget of its battery to the limit.
Some people just want to see the world burn!
Samsung might design the parts to fit there phone. But they don't design the entire operating system. Idk if the note 7 was operating on snapdragon or a Samsung chip. Samsung has far less involvement and far less control over the overall outcome of the whole of the product than Apple does.
Apple may not make every component itself. But Apple make sure to control all the crucial and important components.
It its designs its own processsors now, it makes its own software, it owns the company that designs the cameras that go into the phone. It controls every step.
Does Samsung?
In western context, communication problems may still exist but be more linked to the company or a particular group, like the challenger disaster or the apolo 1 fire