What a waste

[vinny11950]

Good article on the environmental impact of the Samsung galaxy phone recall

(broken link removed)

They could have fixed the phones IF the battery was user replaceable (just send users new batteries that don't catch fire) - they are not.

Also, all the rare earth materials in smartphones are not recycled either, so they get trashed. I can't help but imagine that at some point in the future we will need those rare earth materials for something really important and we won't have them because we needed to upgrade to the newer and trendier smartphone available.

 

[Handsonautotech]

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Also, all the rare earth materials in smartphones are not recycled either, so they get trashed. I can't help but imagine that at some point in the future we will need those rare earth materials for something really important and we won't have them because we needed to upgrade to the newer and trendier smartphone available.

At somepoint it will cost more to mine fresh materials and they will mine the area these get dumped into.

 

[iamlucky13]

There's not any near-term shortage of rare earth minerals. The historical name is a bit misleading. However, the demand has ramped up faster than new production in recent years, and the Chinese have blatantly manipulated the market in cycles to kill off foreign competitors and enable preferential availability to Chinese electronics, but the long term global availability is not a major source of concern.

And I would wager that financial cost to Samsung of this recall is far, far larger than any attempt to estimate a socialized cost of the environmental impact would work out to - effectively, greed is by itself more than adequate incentive to avoid repeating this mistake even before you consider the environmental concerns.

It's also worth keeping in mind that while smartphones are major users of rare earths and other high impact minerals like lithium, they're individually very small. It's the 1.4 billion of them shipped per year that makes them major consumers of these minerals, although that market is flattening out as it approaches saturation. Other major users like LED lights and and flatscreen TV's are probably also flattening out in demand.

Still other users like wind turbines and electric cars are rapidly growing. A single Tesla Model S uses 6500 times as much lithium as a Galaxy Note, and I don't know how much more rare earths. Electric vehicles currently make up less than 1% of the global passenger vehicle market. That should give you some sense of the scope of how much change is looming when the current sales volume is around 500,000 units per year, the overall car market is 88 million units per year, and many are hoping for electric cars to completely displace internal combustion.

 

[begreen]

We're driving compact rechargeable battery tech to the edge. Each new gen phone wants to out compete in the areas of charging time, recharge interval, etc., while many new apps chew through that capacity like it was candy. Something's got to give.

 

[vinny11950]

effectively, greed is by itself more than adequate incentive to avoid repeating this mistake even before you consider the environmental concerns.

Great post on the subject, Lucky13, however I disagree that greed is incentive enough to avoid repeating this mistake. Corporate history is full of companies that failed because greed won out at the expense of everything else. I understand that in this case Samsung was trying to match the new Iphone and took chances they probably shouldn't have with the battery. If so, they should have made the battery consumer replaceable. The same goes for the Iphone.

But they don't want to do this because it nudges people to buy a new phone when the battery life wanes. So you get a much shorter lifecycle out of the product. The same goes for the jacks and chargers they keep changing from one model to another, making the consumer have a nice collection of chargers that are obsolete to your newer device.

That is not greed. It is their business model.

 

[vinny11950]

CNET has a good article on the issue:

https://www.cnet.com/news/why-is-samsung-galaxy-note-7-exploding-overheating/

"According to a unpublished preliminary report sent to Korea's Agency for Technology and Standards (obtained by Bloomberg), Samsung had a manufacturing error that "placed pressure on plates contained within battery cells," which "brought negative and positive poles into contact."

"The defect was revealed when several contributing factors happened simultaneously, which included sub-optimized assembly process that created variations of tension and exposed electrodes due to insufficient insulation tape," a Samsung representative tells CNET."

"Or, in plain English: the thin plastic layer that separates the positive and negative sides of the battery got punctured, became the shortest route for electricity to zap across the battery (that's why they call it a "short-circuit"), and became a huge fire risk."

"What does pressure have to do with it? MIT materials chemistry Professor Don Sadoway explains that today's cell phone batteries are made by literally pressing together a stack of battery components -- and that battery companies are under pressure (no pun intended) to cram in as much battery capacity as possible."

 

[Ashful]

They could have fixed the phones IF the battery was user replaceable (just send users new batteries that don't catch fire)

Are you certain this is correct? Without having bothered to read up on it, I had assumed the trouble was just as likely with the battery management circuitry, as the battery itself.

I'm thankful for the people who buy something other than Apple, as this competition is needed to drive continuous product improvement from both sides, but I have to admit I will never understand these people.

 

[vinny11950]

Well, the supposed reason the battery is not replaceable is the drive to make the phones slimmer, so they are instead glued in place. This also pushes the battery manufacturing process to pack the battery elements tighter, which according to reports is what caused the batteries to fail. They thought they could fix it with a software update to charge the battery to 60% only, as they thought 100% charge created a chemical process that ruptured the battery casing and created the short. Finally, they probably figured they couldn't fix the battery manufacturing defects at a reasonable cost to save a damaged brand product that would keep getting bad press every time something happened. So they did the smartest thing they could do and killed it.

On a side note, I look at Iphone users and don't understand what all the hype is about. A good Android phone is enough for me.

 

[iamlucky13]

Great post on the subject, Lucky13, however I disagree that greed is incentive enough to avoid repeating this mistake. Corporate history is full of companies that failed because greed won out at the expense of everything else. I understand that in this case Samsung was trying to match the new Iphone and took chances they probably shouldn't have with the battery. If so, they should have made the battery consumer replaceable. The same goes for the Iphone.

But they don't want to do this because it nudges people to buy a new phone when the battery life wanes. So you get a much shorter lifecycle out of the product. The same goes for the jacks and chargers they keep changing from one model to another, making the consumer have a nice collection of chargers that are obsolete to your newer device.

That is not greed. It is their business model.

I don't mean that greed will definitively prevent similar future failures. I mean the cost of this kind of mistake is bigger incentive to at least *try* to avoid similar in the future than anything else that could practically be suggested. Sometimes mistakes like this still make it through, but billion dollar mistakes have a habit of instilling more caution - both for Samsung and their competitors who are watching closely.

I don't think Samsung has copied Apple's absurd charger games, have they?

As for the rest, it's not just the battery. My wife is on her 4th phone in 5 years: her dumb phone still worked, but we were tired of paying the $200+ per year premium for Verizon, and she wanted a smart phone. The first two lasted about 18 months before each developed serious hardware problems I was unable to fix that made them almost unusable. The salesman claims that's a typical lifespan. Hmmm...great sales pitch. The third had better last longer...

Meanwhile, my $30 dumb phone is finally dying after 7 years. I'm certain I can't talk my wife into going back, and even if I could, it looks like the major carriers and even many of the MVNO carriers have stopped offering them - Cricket, for example, has one dumb phone, but no plans for it (you pay for 1 GB of data you can't use).

I bought, but haven't switched over to a replacement a couple weeks ago. It turns out T-Mobile was clearing out stock when I decided to get one. The salesman had to go dig around in the back room to see if he had any left.

 

[Ashful]

I look at Iphone users and don't understand what all the hype is about. A good Android phone is enough for me.

... if someday they actually make one, right?

My wife is on her 4th phone in 5 years: her dumb phone still worked, but we were tired of paying the $200+ per year premium for Verizon, and she wanted a smart phone. The first two lasted about 18 months before each developed serious hardware problems I was unable to fix that made them almost unusable. The salesman claims that's a typical lifespan. Hmmm...great sales pitch. The third had better last longer...

My kids, age 3 and 7, now own my 2009 iPhone 3 and 2013 iPhone 5. Both still work fine, despite being thrown, dropped, and abused on an almost-daily basis. They use them to play games, and facetime with their grandparents.

Short of accidentally driving over it with a skidsteer, I can't imagine how you'd manage to kill one in 18 months!

 

[iamlucky13]

Short of accidentally driving over it with a skidsteer, I can't imagine how you'd manage to kill one in 18 months!

Apparently latent hardware defects that cause something to fail over time. At least one of them seems to have been triggered by an OS update, but even a clean reinstall didn't fix it, so whatever happened was apparently hardware. I suspect the rate is lower with Apple products, but I know no shortage of people who have experienced similar with iPhones.

 

[sportbikerider78]

I love my new Samsung S7 Edge. It blows the doors off the last generation and I can't imagine ever going back to an "I" anything. Love that you can just drop in new microSD memory as well.

 

[sportbikerider78]

effectively, greed is by itself more than adequate incentive to avoid repeating this mistake even before you consider the environmental concerns.

Uhmmm...yeah....thats called profit and companies need to make that..so they can pay for their employees, report to shareholders profits and invest in new tech.

Call it whatever you want, money makes the world go around and cell phones sure do prevent lots of people from printed mail, letters, stamps, gas for transportation...ect. I don't think it would be a stretch at all to say that cell phones are green compared to snail mail.

 

[iamlucky13]

Uhmmm...yeah....thats called profit and companies need to make that..so they can pay for their employees, report to shareholders profits and invest in new tech.

Right. That's the point. Excuse my satirical choice of terms. Although the environmental impact of waste may seem significant at a glance, the bigger incentive to try to avoid this kind of mistake in the future is how much it hurts those profits.