In the wake of Galaxy Note 7’s death

Samsung pulled the plug on Galaxy Note 7 (GN7) last Tuesday in an admission of its inability to fix, or even precisely identify, the problem with perhaps the most advanced smartphone ever produced. Galaxy Note 7 has simply failed and its production has stopped. As to the real cause of the failure – besides the […]

Samsung pulled the plug on Galaxy Note 7 (GN7) last Tuesday in an admission of its inability to fix, or even precisely identify, the problem with perhaps the most advanced smartphone ever produced. Galaxy Note 7 has simply failed and its production has stopped.
As to the real cause of the failure – besides the fact that the lithium-ion battery caught fire – all we are hearing is that Samsung’s ambition in GN7, motivated by the need to outperform iPhone, was so high that the company packed too much stuff inside the device, forcing it to draw too much energy in a very short time. To be sure, there’s some element of tech miracle in this event, in the sense that the hundreds of testers Samsung deployed to reproduce the explosion of GN7 were never able to do so.
What should you do if you have a Galaxy Note 7 (either the original or the replacement version)? Return it to where you bought it from to get a full refund, or exchange it for Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 Edge. Online purchasers could visit www.samsung.com . Since the release of GN7 in August, Samsung has received at least 92 reports of overheating batteries in the U.S. alone, including 26 reports of burns and 55 of property damage, according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
How will Samsung pick up the pieces? These are certainly challenging times for Samsung.
First of all, not knowing the precise cause of the battery explosion casts some doubt in one’s mind as to the depth of knowledge that the company or its suppliers has on energy storage technology, which is so pivotal to the powering of any handheld device. As I write this article, Samsung still does not know what is really going on. However, leaked documents suggest that the defective batteries were actually supplied by a Samsung subsidiary – Samsung SDI.
There were also speculations at Samsung as to the cause: “The plates inside the SDI battery were too close to each other near its rounded corners, making it vulnerable to a short circuit, according to the documents, and the battery also had defects in its insulating tape and the coating of its negative electrode.” However, the technical problem might also be more complex.
How do we know that other future phones won’t have the problem that GN7 has or that the company will be able to get out of the present problem on time without too much damage to the Samsung brand? So, the potential for consumer distrust of the brand is there. And as you know, you can take trust to the bank. Samsung is the world’s largest maker of smartphone devices, the sales of which account for almost half of Samsung’s revenue. So, direct financial impact of GN7’s failure on Samsung is not difficult to imagine. Even before Samsung announced it was stopping the production of GN7, the company’s stock had fallen more than 8%, the largest drop since 2008, shaving off $17 billion from the company’s market value.
Unnerving are reports that Samsung also has a few recent problematic products out there: a recall in Australia of more than 144,000 Samsung washing machines that were prone to causing fires and a potential recall of defective laundry units in the US. There have also been problems over the years: the 2003 recall of 184,000 microwave ovens in the US, the 210,000 refrigerators in South Korea in 2009 and other recalls between 2007 and 2009 of microwave ovens and washing machines in the US because of shock hazard and fire risk, respectively. According to Brian Chen in the 12 October 2016 issue of New York Times, “Samsung may also be preparing to recall top-loading washing machines in the United States. Some models of the top-loading washers made between 2011 and this year are at risk of causing property damage or personal injury when the machines wash water-resistant clothing and bulky items including bedding, according to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).” The agency last month was advising consumers to only use the delicate cycle with those items: “The lower spin speed in the delicate cycle lessens the risk of impact injuries or property damage due to the washing machine becoming dislodged.”
At least a collateral damage has resulted from the GN7 debacle: Oculus, which is a Facebook-owned virtual (VR) powerhouse. Oculus had its entire future pinned on the success of Samsung’s handsets. The death of GN7 will deal a blow to Oculus’ Gear VR sales. This is the second lesson that Facebook is learning within a few months on the issues with betting your tech on others. Remember a few months ago when Tesla’s rocket blew up? Facebook’s Free Wi-Fi for Africa program exploded with it.
Chen alluded to “Samsung’s often bureaucratic process for rectifying these consumer issues,” and raised the question of whether or not Samsung prioritized profit over customer safety. Obviously, I am hoping that this is not the case.