Samsung Might Have Finally Fixed It’s Exploding Phone Business
One of the more interesting tech stories this year is the exploding Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Smartphones. For throughout the three months since the phone’s launch, the media has reported multiple cases of the phones exploding and catching fire, primarily due to the phone’s internal lithium battery. The media did it’s job covering these events, which were too numerous to all be mere coincidence, and as result Samsung suffered for it. According to Parmy Olson at Forbes.com, Samsung’s third quarter profits took a 30% hit and forced them to postpone the release of their Galaxy Note S7, a slimmer, sleeker version of the original Galaxy Note 7. However, it appears the S7 is finally making its way to shelves in times for the holidays, with full assurance of the phone’s quality by Samsung in a press release last Friday.It will be interesting to see what direction the journalism community takes this story going forward. In all honesty they did there jobs by taking the severe amount of reports on the exploding phones seriously, which is commendable as many people could easily write off one or two of these incidents as a click-bait article to attract traffic. However, the facts are undeniable and the impact of the coverage even flooded into decisions made by airports, with the FAA banning Galaxy Note 7s from all US flights. It’s not hard to see why when as September 1st, Samsung themselves reported 35 cases globally of the phones catching fire. The media owes it to the public to hold Samsung to task if another catastrophe like this happens ever again, not just for the Galaxy Note 7S, but any phone Samsung makes from this point forward. While the media has the right to criticize Samsung (and this case should) I think that for users it comes down to brand preference, or if this is the time anyone is going to invest in a smartphone they probably aren’t going to side with a brand whose phones are so hot on the market that they explode. This obviously isn’t something that affects every phone, but when the media reports a story this hot, it definitely makes you think about whether that phone you got for your friends/family member is a ticking time bomb. To close, I think Samsung has fixed the problem, but media owes it to us to hold them accountable for these mistakes, especially considering how much we rely on smartphones. It is a tragic, but kinda of funny reminder that technology isn’t perfect and we need to take in account that sometimes faulty products do get made and thus we should avoid those products until they are guaranteed to work, which unfortunately, isn’t something we can ever be 100% sure of.
Link to Olson’s Forbes Article
Image Courtesy of digitaltrends.com
It still amazes me that a company as big as Samsung could release a product that literally sets on fire like this one did. I think that they probably expected the media backlash that would come with it however and were prepared to handle it. The new phone will probably great as they will have learned from their mistakes and won’t want to go through it all again.