Samsung Electronics Co. has temporarily suspended production of the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, an official at a supplier for Samsung said Monday, amid a series of media reports that some Note 7 replacements have caught fire.
The halt is in cooperation with consumer safety regulators from South Korea, the United States and China, the official said on the condition of anonymity.
It’s high time regulators around the world initiate a deep investigation into this whole debacle. Samsung’s behaviour has been inexcusable, and borders on gross negligence.
Temporarily sounds like a threat…
As recently as last week I was getting ebay.ph notices with offers for the Galaxy Note 7. My thoughts were, Do they not pay attention to the news?
I really don’t understand how people relate Samsung with reliability anyway.
Everything I have ever had that was made by Samsung has failed in some way, hard drives (usually just after the guarantee expires), mobile phones (screen problems, general failures), tv’s and dvd players.
Maybe I’ve just been unlucky, but I don’t think so as I know a couple of folk with a similar experience to me and who like me, avoid Samsung products like the plague.
Also there is the debacle in Australia with washing machines made by Samsung that date back quite a few years. First there was some that were literally shaking themselves apart and falling to bits, and more recent there is some that just explode and catch fire.
Hopefully this will result in a change of direction and perhaps better products from them but I won’t hold my breath on that.
The best outcome would be that people stop buying their crap until they start making them properly and make sure they’re safe!
A friend of mine still uses his SGS 1 bought over 5 years ago – it works perfectly aside from its battery which has become very weak.
My parents have a Samsung LCD TV bought over 8 years ago which functions perfectly.
People around me own multiple Samsung devices including washers, various kitchen equipment, displays and laptops – no one can corroborate your “experience” which sounds more like unsubstantiated hatred.
I can. Everything me and my family have bought from Samsung (except for a washing machine in my mom’s house) has failed, usually at the most inconvenient/crucial of times. Also, in my region at least, their RMA process for failed SSDs is a huge PITA.
Nowadays, if a relative or acquaintance has issues with their phone or electronic device of some sort and asks me for help, I first ask them if it’s a Samsung. If the answer is yes (it usually is, unsurprisingly) I’ll tell them I won’t touch even if they paid me.
As far as I’m concerned, Samsung products from their mobile and electronic divisions aren’t even a consideration anymore.
Edited 2016-10-10 09:06 UTC
Another isolated user with issues.
Here’s what’s blowing in your face:
https://www.theacsi.org/customer-satisfaction-benchmarks/benchmarks-…
You cannot fake a satisfaction rating if Samsung creates subpar faulty devices which fail left and right.
Give me some general stats, not your personal experience multiplied by your bias against everything made by Samsung.
It’s my money, and the money of those close to me, that’s being spent, so the only “general stat” that matters to me is my own experience and I’ll continue telling it how I experience it. That applies to all companies that have failed me – list also includes Dyson, Leica, Ducati, BMW and Specialized, so it’s not some pro-western/luxury thing – not just Samsung. You can throw all the stats and survey results you want, and while my experience may be anecdotal, the hatred I feel is far from unsubstantiated.
Edited 2016-10-10 11:04 UTC
Apparently there was some reports in Norway and probably elsewhere about Samsung TVs having planned failures as well, bad caps failing at a specified time … 🙁 And designed not to be repaired easily by repairshops..
Really? You really think that’s how capacitor fail?
Capacitors aren’t timed fuses, the design to make them fail after a given time would be more costly than normal caps and would require research that costs more money.
That is just a conspiracy theory possibly caused by some batches of bad capacitors. Bad chips are sold every day including counterfeit ones – not even the military can avoid all counterfeit stuff that’s on the market.
Yes, as long as you don’t buy a Samsung washer. Recalled due to fire and in some cases almost burning houses down.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/82013858/Some-recalled-S…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-14/samsung-washine-machine-recal…
Edited 2016-10-11 06:35 UTC
Just individuals talking about their own reality, as perceived. Mine is the best Washing Machine and the Worst Color Printer in my life [and that’s a a long shot]. Former clients a very good relation some decades ago and all the spectra, of late years.
“…give me some general stats,..”
That SAMSUNG’s money better spent on standing by Engineering, at their original specifications.
Statistics WORKS DIFFERENTLY at different scales. Consumers and Small Business Unable to Embrace Risk in the way that Corps do. Two spectacularly failed -in a row- SAMSUNG Printers before their promised life expectancy [usually twice the bare bones warranty], [one after 260 prints] plus ultra expensive consumables. And They are out from my horizon.
You can present to me all the Quality Statistics you want… They’re out.
Edited 2016-10-10 15:02 UTC
Anything expected to fail before twice the bare-bones life expectancy SHOULD BE LISTED AS CONSUMABLE. And none of those consumables should be highly priced.
Bad, but if Any consumable high on price unavoidable [Thinking of Printers’ Drums] Should be Advertised and Priced Starting from the FRONT PAGE.
Things should be designed and supported FOR an educated Consumer being able to exchange the complete list of consumables, ALSO able to optimize device performance, afterwards.
Statistics are like mini-skirts, they give you good ideas but hide the most important thing.
Example: “If fusser expected to fail within a year on average use” THEN include a fusser [or two] on the box. This will create an additional parts market that will keep the Other commercial chains from committing abuse.
[If those ‘boxed’ replacements are quite standard (a fusser is a fusser, finally) also could make an incursion up, at the ‘gift’ economy. That’s elite publicity].
I’ve bought two Samsumg TVs and both failed right after the expiration of the two years guarantee. On the first one the mobo failed and had to be replaced (and browsing that specific model on internet I’m not alone on that).
On the second one the LCD panel began leaking. It has now two big black leak balls on the upper side of the screen and a couple of vertical likes on each side.
That’s all anecdotal, and I have a friend with a Samsung TV that has been working for years without problems, but it’s not like I’ll be buying another one ever after having these two failing on me in just 4 years.
I wound’t consider not buying anything Samsung after wasting almost €2000 on faulty hardware to be “unsubstantiated hatred”.
I see the fanboi’s are here already! Instead of going all red and blowing a fuse, just do a search for related articles, it’s a real eye opener. Start with the appliance fiasco in Australia, that one was very well reported, even here in the UK.
Your attitude of “it all works for me” does not count in the real world. There is people out of pocket and extremely inconvenienced because of Samsung products!
My Samsung Series 6 TV occasionally fails to show picture when powering on when the picture settings are set in the default “Dynamic” mode. But Dynamic mode is crap anyway so I switched it to standard, which doesn’t demonstrate the issue, because the backlight is set to a more comfortable level. If you reduce the blacklight level in Dynamic the problem is also fixed.
My friend’s Galaxy S4 had a black screen issue.
My Galaxy S3 overheats when screen is set to a high brightness setting (again, the default) and enters a powersaving mode.
It is a possibility from the above that Sammy practices extreme engineering. Aka Sammy pushes materials and designs to their limits instead of letting some overhead. The problem with this is that if someone somewhere miscalculates something, you get black screen issues or exploding Note 7 devices.
Anecdotal evidence is not really evidence. None of Samsung products I’ve bought have ever failed to date, and so what? Does it mean that Samsung products are more reliable then other products? No. Does it mean they are less reliable? No. What exactly does it mean? Just single personal experience, which is well below the margin of statistical error.
FWIW it would be nice is there was actually a statistically sound study of long-term reliability of electronics. Unfortunately I couldn’t find one.
Indeed, anecdotes are just that. However it’s hard not to take personal experience into account, even when it is most likely no longer relevant. For example, I used to work in a certain high street electronics and computer parts retailer around 15 years ago. That was the era of the infamous Hitachi “DeathStar” hard drives, and we had many of them returned to us. But we also had a very high number of Samsung hard drives and optical drives returned as faulty – far more than we had of any other brand bar the Hitachis. And when it seems like every few days a Samsung drive comes back, you tend to develop a distrust of them, even though I’m sure their manufacturing lines and facilities have changed since the days of 40GB drives.
I own a number of Samsung products, each purchased based on how well my existing stuff has performed. I have had zero problems and from my perspective Samsung has been nothing but great. But, you’re absolutely correct in that is doesn’t really mean anything to anyone but me and those who value my opinions. Of course you will find people, and you only have to look as far as in this very thread, who have had basically the opposite experience. You’ll find the same is true for nearly every brand and type of product. At the end of the day, it’s always YMMV.
The one other thing I’d like to comment on is when people will bash one product while praising another without realizing both are manufactured in the same plant using the same parts – or close to it. There are a lot of products that really only differ by what sticker or logo is placed on them but people still swear by one and hate the other. I have to laugh at the absurdity in that.
What I find most interesting is that people will bash failing things based one what other people believe. Your Apple device fails after a year -> you say you were unlucky, your Samsung device failed after two year -> you say they are terrible shit or deliberately trying to break when warranty runs out.
Notice it in people on any kind of product, and you will see how harsh or forgiving people can be based on presumed prevailing consumer preferences.
Just to add,
I think youre right of the Samsung of 2010 kind of era. I brough some TV’s and they work incredibly well as does PC Monitors.
However after a few years it appears they are going for the bottom line instead of trying to sell quaility items at a good price.
A Samsung Phone (Galaxy Note2) Samsung S Tab from 2015 all experienced a massive slow down to pretty much unusable speed, unless you factory reset it, after which 3 months later the same thing happens.
My Samsung washing machine broke with one month to go (luckily) on the extended 5 years warranty. After a lot of fighting i managed to get a replacement which feels a lot cheaper and only has a one year warranty, i fully expect it to break within a year. My friends samsung fridge went the same way after a couple of years.
They are not the company they used to be, i personally wont be buying anything Samsung from now on as everything from 2012 onwards just seems to break down, usually a month or two after the warranty has broken…. call me crazy but it’s almost like they are designed to last only until the warranty is up…. nah
Including my immediate family we have:
Old phones that are still kept as up-to-date backup:
– Galaxy S2 ( 5 y/o, still works w/ CM ).
– Galaxy S3 ( 4 y/o, uses Samsung 4.4 ).
– Galaxy Note 1 ( 4 y/o, still works w/ CM 4.4 ).
Daily drivers:
– 2 x Galaxy Note 3 ( Both are 3 y/o, one uses S7 Edge based ROM and the other one uses Samsung stock ROM ).
– 2 x Galaxy S5 ( Both are ~2 y/o, both using Samsung stock ROM ).
– 1 x Galaxy S7 Edge ( Less than 1 y/o, Samsung stock ROM ).
All in all, 8 Samsung phones, most of them *over* 3 y/o, zero issues.
More-ever, including my workplace, we have 5 large screen HD T.Vs (55″) and ~10 Samsung computer displays ( 22″ and 24″ LCDs ), some of them 6 and 7 years old (!), again, zero issues.
BTW, I could also point out that the HP servers I use, use re-branded Samsung SSDs, but they are all pretty new, so I cannot really comment on their reliability.
– Gilboa
Edited 2016-10-10 14:21 UTC
I don’t understand your hatred Thom.
There are hundreds of outright deceptive reports when people’s devices ostensibly caught fire – most of them turn out to be either hoaxes, misuse or pure negligence.
Samsung is not an evil company which is interested in buring your property down. They cannot instantly revoke a product line which cost them hundreds of millions of dollars to design, manufacture, market, deliver and sell just because there are isolated reports of often dubious nature. They need considerable time to investigate and take action when findings indicate something wrong.
Samsung’s inept handling of the issue shouldn’t really surprise anyone. Just look how they handled the ssd slow-reading-of-old-files bug in the 840 series. Still meeting people who think its windows’ fault that their system boot got so slow, when the cause is the faulty ssd. Only difference here is that now people could get killed because of the defect.
There used to be a long forgotten time, when ultimate decisions at Tech Corps used to be taken by ENGINEERS.
It’s my speculation that They will have to bulk a higher Amp battery, or relent Note 7.
I posted in the original news thread about the recall that Samsung would be 100% certain that the new phones wouldn’t have a problem because they wouldn’t want to go through another billion dollar recall. Oh how wrong I was…
So, now that it looks like another recall is imminent, I guess I’m done with Samsung. My Note 7 was the first, and last, Samsung phone I’ve ever owned. I guess I’ll probably end up eating the cost of the accessories, but fortunately that’s not too much.
So, what phone would you all recommend I replace it with? I’m really just looking for Android and Qi charging. As awesome as Samsung Pay has been, I don’t like the S7 family, and don’t want to give Samsung any more of my money after this, so I’d rather it not be another Samsung. Unfortunately, I think that means that there are no phones that fit the bill in 2016…
I am in the same boat. I love the stylus of the Note 7, microsd slot and high resolution display. There simply isn’t a current phone as nice. The only thing I don’t like is the non-replacable battery…. well and the fact that the battery could catch fire….
One has to wonder about the timing…
All those problems coincide with the release of Google’s and Apple’s Flagship smartphones.