This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this folio. Terms of use.

note fire

Samsung is getting serious near prying the Galaxy Note 7 back from customers. The company has issued a call back, worked with carriers, and made several announcements concerning the device. At present, information technology'south going to try a new trick — limiting the bombardment capacity to threescore% charge.

For now, the over-the-air update volition be confined to South Korea, where Samsung took out a front page ad in the Seoul Shinmun, a Southward Korean newspaper. The advertising notes that the devices volition be express to just 60% charge, specifically to drive users towards swapping out their hardware. It is a measure to put consumer safety showtime, but "we apologize for causing inconvenience," according to the AP.

Samsung is reportedly in talks with mobile carriers worldwide to discuss pushing similar updates to other devices. The event underscores ane of the problems with smartphones in full general. With Apple or Microsoft, the company responsible for the operating system also has the ability to push updates for it. Both Os developers have taken steps in recent years to ensure all users are protected past security updates and bug fixes whether they want to be or not.  (Microsoft'southward policies with Windows x accept been controversial for pushing non-security updates and a full general lack of communication around patches — security updates, in and of themselves, aren't controversial). The Android ecosystem is much more than fragmented and no single company claims responsibility for pushing updates to consumers.

note7

Information technology's not clear if Samsung is making this alter but to reduce the run a risk of overheating or because information technology'll drive consumers into shops. Likely information technology'southward a mixture of both. While the company initially downplayed the risk and told The Wall Street Journal that only a scattering of devices had been afflicted, we can't remember the last fourth dimension any company went to such lengths to recall devices. Sony's battery recall from a few years back when lithium-ion battery tech was newer and less proven was meaning. Merely Samsung has pulled out all the stops to bulldoze consumers into stores to supersede their hardware.

Either this problem is larger than the company initially idea, or information technology's decided to exist extremely proactive with its outreach. If the old, the company ought to say something physical about the issue — treating this as a face-saving measure isn't going to work if high-profile failures continue happening. If the latter, and then good for Samsung. Hitting battery life is fairly likely to bulldoze people back to stores, and hopefully the company can roll the prepare out to more than than merely South korea.