Samsung's Calls For Industry To Embrace Its Battery Check Process as a New Standard Have Been Ignored (cnet.com) 51
Months after the Galaxy Note 7 debacle, the topic remains too hot for the rest of the wireless industry to handle. From a report on CNET: With Samsung's Galaxy S8 to launch next week, a renewed discussion of the Note 7, which had an unhealthy tendency to catch fire and which had to be recalled, is inevitable. Samsung opened that door in January when it embarked on a mea culpa tour. Beyond spelling out the cause of the overheating problem in its popular phone, the company unveiled an eight-point battery check system it said surpassed industry practices, and it invited rivals to follow its model. But two months after the introduction, what's the industry response? A collective shrug. Interviews with phone makers and carriers found that while all placed a high priority on safety, few would talk specifically about Samsung's new battery check process or the idea of adopting it for themselves.
We place a high priority on battery safety (Score:3)
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Samsung is kind of a special case, as they are a huge company and probably manufacture their own batteries. I think that most phone manufacturers outsource that job to a third-party battery supplier. They give the the battery manufacturer the specs, and it's their job to build it.
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"Hey everybody, our batteries meet Samsung's safety standards!"
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Not only that, but it is kind of shocking that other companies do not want to go to every rooftop and shout out how they are on par with Samsung with respect to battery safety.
"Hey everybody, our batteries meet Samsung's safety standards!"
Except it was Samsung that had battery issues, not the other companies. Agreeing to use a new battery check process would admit that there's fault in their testing process which there wasn't. Samsung will try to make this appear like other companies are ignoring the issue when Samsung had the major recall.
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You're giving a serious answer to a sarcastic post you know...
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or, they have their own safety tests in place and don't want to subject themselves to licensing or other fees to samsung Why would a company want to adopt Samsung's battery safety methodology? It has no track record since the battery exploding thing from their last model.
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Take the number of batteries in the field, (A), and multiply it by the probable rate of failures that would be prevented, (B), then multiply the result by the average out-of-court settlement, (C). A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of the testing procedure, we don't do it.
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This.
A thousand times this.
Since their competitors have failed to voluntarily participate Samsung will take it to Washington next; lobbying Congress and the FCC to erect a (another?) battery safety bureaucracy complete with $250k certification fees and a special "fast lane" process for the well healed. Never let a fuck up go to waste.
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Apple will pay the congress critters $1M more than Samsung will, and the problem will go away.
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I don't think you understand, Apple will gladly pay, as will any huge company. It's dirt cheap insurance to put up another major obstacle to any new competitor that might arise in the future. No existing player will pass up that opportunity.
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Nothing to do with adding more hardware. It is QC checks on the batteries themselves (Durability test, Visual Inspection, X-ray test, disassembling test, delta OCT test, charge/discharge test, TVOC test, accelerated usage test).
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Since Samsung also manufactures its own batteries, they have to up their game. It's not just about smartphones, it's also about their own 2170/21700 batteries going head-to-head with Tesla/Panasonic.
If they can't give proof that they're being extra-careful, nobody's going to want electric cars with Samsung batteries in them, which in turn means electric car manufacturers won't buy Samsung batteries.
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Or alternatively "boy our process was garbage and we were lucky, but it is good now"
even if they were 'just' lucky, they'd never admit to it.
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They are all waiting to have a note-7 style catastrophe and then they will adopt the standards as a groundbreaking move. Until then why bother? Its not like Apple is taking *any* flak for the iPhones that catch fire, since they have always had the problem (albeit in a smaller margin vs Samsung).
What a non-sequitur. Why should Apple catch *any* flak for iPhones that catch on fires due to faulty 3rd party battery swaps?
So far the phone mfg with a public problem.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Is Samsung. They are talking *loud* about something they purport to be a super better thing. It would help their narrative if they make it sound like all the competitors are ready to fail at any moment.
So the competitors going along with it and making it look like Samsung is *leading* in battery safety would just play into Samsung's hands.
In terms of the actual relative merit, who knows, but from a perspective of marketable storytelling, it is very much not in the interest of Samsung's competitors to play up Samsung's process. If there is merit that their competitors are told about and recognize, expect them to silently improve their process, but in no way publicize that fact.
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Either way, if the *starting* point is Samsung's process, it paints a picture that is more advantageous to Samsung than others. That's the marketing collatoral Samsung wants, it doesn't need to just be rubber stamped.
Samsung competition is going to want to privately do improvements or collaborate without samsung, but privately, at least until the public forgets about the Note 7 Fiasco. They are not going to squander their relatively good image by giving the impression their house is not in order.
If anythi
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You mean, something like UL safety testing? All the batteries were safe to use, *IF* used properly.
Samsung squeezed a slightly too big battery into a slightly too small battery compartment.
No amount of independent battery testing will find that problem. The problem is in the design. Nothing to do with battery.
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Is Samsung. They are talking *loud* about something they purport to be a super better thing. It would help their narrative if they make it sound like all the competitors are ready to fail at any moment.
So the competitors going along with it and making it look like Samsung is *leading* in battery safety would just play into Samsung's hands.
In terms of the actual relative merit, who knows, but from a perspective of marketable storytelling, it is very much not in the interest of Samsung's competitors to play up Samsung's process. If there is merit that their competitors are told about and recognize, expect them to silently improve their process, but in no way publicize that fact.
As someone who has been exposed to business litigation and insurance cases, to me it seems more that they are stacking wood against any current and future litigation. Not only did they correct the problem, but they are going above and beyond the minimum required.
Even well-built batteries do sometimes fail, usually due to abuse, but proving abuse is difficult if the battery is reduced to a small mound of melted plastic. Any Samsung battery failure like now or in the near future are going to have a pack
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Publicising their QA process now serves to help defend against current and future litigation.
It doesn't do squat against current litigation. Litigation already in progress related to a past event isn't going to be helped by what you started doing today to prevent said event in the future.
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Yeah, instead it's just giving competitors an opportunity to fire back with a "well, it's nice that Samsung is finally taking battery testing as seriously as we've been all along..."
Immediately after making a massive fuck up in a particular field isn't really the time to publicly tout your expertise in that field. It takes a bit of time to demonstrate that you've actually learned from your mistake an
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It would help their narrative if they make it sound like all the competitors are ready to fail at any moment.
We had an iPhone 5 catch fire at work (actually the first ever case of a phone fire I had heard of was from an iPhone). I had my GPS unit catch fire while attached to my camera. Today I read in the news that someone's wireless headphones burst into flames while on an aircraft burning their face. Google any phone model + fire and you'll likely find results.
Sure nothing has failed as spectacularly as the Note 7 but it's worth remembering that the original fault was from one battery manufacturer and the subseq
Because everybody (Score:2)
should listen to Samsung's advice about batteries!
Re:Because everybody (Score:5, Informative)
If Samsung implements their battery check procedure, do you think they will ever having a problem with exploding phone batteries again? I don't think they will.
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Yes. Everybody *SHOULD* listen to Samsung about batteries, because Samsung suffered a HUGE SETBACK with the exploding phones, and therefore are committed to that NEVER HAPPENING AGAIN! They cannot allow it. They cannot afford it. If Samsung implements their battery check procedure, do you think they will ever having a problem with exploding phone batteries again? I don't think they will.
Samsung had processes in place before the exploding battery issue. It's not like they blindly created batteries and this snuck up on them. So they are putting more red tape in place but that doesn't mean an issue can't slip by in the future. Nobody predicts problems. They just happen.
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should listen to Samsung's advice about batteries!
Yes, that's how every industry works. They build the future on the ashes of past failures. Samsung is the expert in this process now as they have invested considerably to identify weak points in their processes. They should be listened to.
Psst... Hey Samsung... (Score:2)
Yes, I know you think you've developed an industry-leading battery safety design and procedures, but maybe give it a little time and wait til you are closer to the top of the ladder before asking other companies to join in, and maybe you'll get a better response.
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No, don't *publicly* learn anything from the mistakes of others.
Maybe Samsung was more lax, or maybe they were just more lucky. Either way, their competition isn't going to do anything *publicly* to demonstrate a hint that it was luck rather than quality.
If competitor processes were lacking, but lucky, you can be certain they did (quietly) learn and improve.
"New Standard Have Been Ignored " (Score:1)
without reading the article, because I cannot get passed the headline - is that "new standards have been ignored" or "a new standard has been ignored"?
has and have are not that confusing, it's not like it is an Oxford comma or anything
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"Have" is correct. Let me help you parse the sentence...
"Samsung's Calls For Industry To Embrace Its Battery Check Process as a New Standard Have Been Ignored."
"Samsung's Calls...Have Been Ignored"
(It is not "Samsung's New Standard Have Been Ignored" as you seem to be reading it.)
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'Past' and 'passed' aren't that difficult either, but you managed to fuck it up.
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It would greatly help your case if you hadn't mixed up past and passed yourself. However after reading your comment, it is very difficult to take your criticism seriously.
Pretty understandable.. (Score:2)
Do what I say, not what I do.
I mean, of course Samsung really needs a new battery check process, doesn't mean others also need it.
In order for anyone to follow Samsung's advices, they need first to prove it's worth for other companies, not only that it's needed for themselves not to f*ck up things further.
And in the end, it was a design flaw that caused the whole deal. Samsung rushed the process, cut corners (figuratively AND literally) to release the phone faster, ignored warnings, which ultimately lead to
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Other companies would follow if Samsung had lower rates of failures, not the opposite.
That is not how industries work. Companies who experience epic failures are likely to invest the most in ensuring they don't happen again. They are most definitely the ones to lean from.
Silly Samsung (Score:1)