US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements

Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by sho_hn on Monday October 10, 2016 @01:28AM (#12675231)

LG has a top competitor out right now in the V20. Removable battery, MIL-spec drop proof, second wide angle rear camera, concert-capable stereo mics with manual controls, a second screen that's actually useful (it's located in what would otherwise be dead bezel next to the front camera, and shows e.g. notifications while fullscreen, or can be used as a taskbar), usable software (read: close to vanilla Android Nougat now), fancy DAC and bundled with $150 B&O in-ears. With an aluminum main body and svelte looks.

And for some reason they won't launch it in Europe and steal Samsung's sales. Madness, it's by far the most compelling phone available right now.

Happy with the one I got in Korea ...

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by icelancer on Monday October 10, 2016 @01:48AM (#12675293)

Wow, the V20 looks amazing. I'll probably sell my iPhone 6+ and my Nexus 6P and get one. Not sure when I can get it in America, unfortunately. Any way to import it from Korea?

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by sho_hn on Monday October 10, 2016 @01:56AM (#12675318)

According to /r/lgv20 T-Mobile and Sprint are getting it in Oct. Not sure about the import part sorry, I live in Seoul these days :)

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by gogopuppygogo on Monday October 10, 2016 @02:08AM (#12675353)

Sounds like a good side business for you to start :-)

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by fsloth on Monday October 10, 2016 @10:23AM (#12677227)

Sadly the only hardware feature I consider critical is available only in the Note:the stylus (I like painting). Just an example how the value of a hardware feature does not depend on the quality of the feature but also on the utility for the user.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by sho_hn on Monday October 10, 2016 @10:39AM (#12677295)

Yep, absolutely. For example I personally go to a lot of live music concerts, so the V20's microphones are really the selling feature for me (and they have nice synergy with the wide angle camera for stage recordings) - I've had the phone for two weeks now and had occasion to try them out at a rock concert and a jazz lounge so far, and they work as advertised and record a clean feed where my Nexus 5 just amounts to garbled noise and clipping that isn't intelligible as music. It's a hw feature I can't seem to get anywhere else (to my knowledge). I can easily see the stylus be the same thing for someone else.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by hrrsn on Monday October 10, 2016 @07:15AM (#12676358)

It's a sad state of affairs that a removable battery is now a headline feature. In the past I didn't care but these days I sure do.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by wallace_f on Monday October 10, 2016 @07:32AM (#12676420)

Is it paranoid of me to associate the disappearance of removable batteries with our apparent steady steps towards an Orwellian future? Or no?

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by forthefuture on Monday October 10, 2016 @07:54AM (#12676518)

Yes and no. It is paranoid because we're already about 20 years into our Orwellian future; it's no longer ahead of us.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by wallace_f on Friday October 14, 2016 @09:13PM (#12712204)

Do you mean, 'It is not paranoid because we're already there?'

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by easytiger on Monday October 10, 2016 @04:43AM (#12675877)

> Madness, it's by far the most compelling phone available right now.

It is completely insane. I'd buy one tomorrow. But I cant

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by tdkl on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @07:35AM (#12683356)

LG has a bad reputation since G3, G4 and V10 with random bootloops.

http://www.androidauthority.com/lg-admits-g4-bootloop-proble...

http://www.androidauthority.com/lg-v10-bootloop-problem-7113...

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by soulnothing on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @09:27AM (#12684139)

I started with an LG optimus on Virgin mobile, and loved that phone. I had an LG G3 and the girlfriend has one as well. I'm mixed about them.

On the one hand, the hard ware is great. I got them cheap refurbished and they have a good community. On the other it gets hot, like burning hot touch. I've been through three batteries since getting it. The boot loop on mine made me switch phones. The thing that is making me pause with them is the software. I'm not fond of the custimaztions, but I can live with them. What got me is getting a marshmallow security update nuked the phone. WiFi stopped working, any earphones in the jack always started "Ok Google" recognigtion. Cell Signal went to 2G, and the Home/Back/OpenApps buttons stopped working. It turned the phone into a brick. I finally got around to rolling back this weekend, which took several hours. This wasn't just me I saw similar complaints on XDA.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by bogomipz on Monday October 10, 2016 @02:38AM (#12675445)

This looks great and a removable battery! Thanks for the tip.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by Veratyr on Monday October 10, 2016 @12:24PM (#12678032)

It all sounds good but it has a 5.7" screen, which kills it for me. It must be super hard to build a good, small phone or something.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by sho_hn on Monday October 10, 2016 @03:13PM (#12679161)

This is partially down to the culture they come from. Koreans spend tons of time commuting on subways or sitting in coffeeshops, often watching video during both. The big screens are just a trade-of geared towards those use cases.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by CountSessine on Monday October 10, 2016 @01:30AM (#12675238)

I really hope it doesn't turn out to be fatal for them but I also hope it breaks the Samsung monopoly over Android and let brands like LG, HTC shine.

OLED displays are so good they still sell themselves, and Samsung is the only handset maker that seems to be committed to the technology. I doubt this will change much.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by acchow on Monday October 10, 2016 @02:26AM (#12675400)

What's so great about OLEDs? They consume much more energy and don't produce the most accurate colors.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by CountSessine on Monday October 10, 2016 @04:30AM (#12675824)

They only consume more energy when displaying white. They consume very little energy when displaying black.

OLED displays have a very wide color gamut. If you have source material that was tuned to it, there's really nothing like it. To get a similar gamut with LCD you need a quantum dot backlight. Samsung devices all have a screen mode where they constrain their gamut to sRGB for more accurate colors, though.

In terms of color accuracy, they've consistently been the best around, when set to limit their gamut to sRGB. This (http://www.displaymate.com/Galaxy_Note7_ShootOut_1.htm) site has test results for most recentish smartphones and tablets and declared the Note 7's display to be "the best performing Smartphone Display that we have ever tested." Every Samsung device with an OLED display released in the last few years has achieved this.

And of course the contrast ratio is much better than LCD. In terms of display quality, provided the phone can be set to sRGB mode, OLED is as good or better than LCD in every metric. And this doesn't even touch on all of the novel uses a display that uses no power when displaying black can be put to - for example, Samsung devices can typically display the time or notifications in white-on-black on the display persistently when the screen is otherwise 'off'. With OLED, only the pixels that are active are drawing power.

The only problem with OLED has been blue pixel decay. I have an OLED display in both my tablet and my phone and I'm a heavy user, and I haven't noticed any change in the 2 years I've owned them though.

Really, it's just a better technology. It's shameful that everyone has allowed Samsung to maintain a lock on it. I really wish I didn't have to buy Samsung devices to get this fantastic technology.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by vamur on Monday October 10, 2016 @09:22AM (#12676909)

One issue with Samsung AMOLEDs I've noticed is the PWM effect - you can see it in any review of a Samsung phone where the phone is not on max brightness. The PWM effect can cause headache for people who are susceptible to the flicker.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by CountSessine on Monday October 10, 2016 @01:52PM (#12678679)

Wow - I didn't know that. This is probably the same group of people who had problems with MEMS displays.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by rayiner on Monday October 10, 2016 @09:34AM (#12676968)

> They only consume more energy when displaying black.

So just the entire Internet?

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by CountSessine on Monday October 10, 2016 @01:47PM (#12678645)

:-) It's ok - just cultivate an interest in all things emo/goth/death-metal and OLED is perfect.

Seriously though, from the above linked article,

While LCDs remain more power efficient for images with mostly full screen white content (like all text screens on a white background, for example), OLEDs are more power efficient for typical mixed image content because they are emissive displays so their power varies with the Average Picture Level (average Brightness) of the image content over the entire screen. For OLEDs, Black pixels and sub-pixels don’t use any power so screens with Black backgrounds are very power efficient for OLEDs. For LCDs the display power is fixed and independent of image content. Currently, OLED displays are more power efficient than LCDs for Average Pictures Levels of 65 percent or less, and LCDs are more power efficient for Average Picture Levels above 65 percent. Since both technologies are continuing to improve their power efficiencies, the crossover will continue to change with time.

At peak brightness with a pure white screen, the iPhone 7's screen draws 1.08 watts, whereas the Galaxy Note 7's draws 1.8 watts. So if you keep your phone at peak brightness, I guess that's one metric where LCD beats OLED.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by Inconel on Monday October 10, 2016 @03:05AM (#12675543)

I'm fairly sure the new OLED displays from Samsung can produce extremely accurate colors. I don't remember exactly where I read so, perhaps AnandTech, but I believe the Samsung displays were considered some of the most accurate smartphone displays prior to the new iPhones.

I should note that for some reason it seems like most smartphone manufacturers, basically everyone aside from Apple, way oversaturate their displays, this is especially true in the case of Samsung. Even the Nexus 6P display looked horrendous to me out of the box. Fortunately there is a setting in the developer options to enable sRGB mode which makes a huge difference.

Regarding power consumption, I think OLED mostly loses out on efficiency when generating white backgrounds, but I'm not sure how much of a battery hit this causes in normal use scenarios.

As to what's so great about OLED, for me, as someone who frequently uses their phone in relatively low light situations, I absolutely love the deep blacks and the fact that when I have the phone on low brightness using a dark theme it barely produces any ambient light. On that note, Google seriously needs to introduce a system wide dark theme. I don't have an iPhone but I'm really interested to see if/when Apple adopts OLED whether they redesign iOS to take advantage of it. I know many people dislike the bright white UI of iOS and Android.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by CountSessine on Monday October 10, 2016 @04:58AM (#12675933)

I absolutely love the deep blacks and the fact that when I have the phone on low brightness using a dark theme it barely produces any ambient light

Yup - completely agree. When I got my Tab S, I knew that the exynos 5420 was grossly inferior to the a8x in the Air 2, but I wanted my tablet for watching videos in bed at night.

I was right; the 5420 is execrable and makes web browsing very painful compared to the Air 2 (my kids have Air 2's). But the display is so much better than the Air 2's in every way you'd care to mention or measure. It's unbeatable for its intended purpose.

<sigh>

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by Inconel on Monday October 10, 2016 @05:12AM (#12675973)

Bedtime browsing is indeed a huge advantage. I can finally browse HN in bed without pissing off the person trying to sleep next to me. Now Google just needs to get serious about system wide dark themes, as well as dark themes for stock apps, and I'll be happy.

I'm sure with the large screen on a tablet this is even more of a benefit.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by fakename123 on Monday October 10, 2016 @05:39AM (#12676057)

I found the app Twilight (similar to f.lux on the desktop) to be very useful. And it doesn't require root.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by vardump on Monday October 10, 2016 @02:51AM (#12675482)

Properly calibrated OLEDs look at least a lot better to my eye than any LCDs. Much deeper blacks and more pure colors that go past what an LCD can reproduce.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by paulcole on Monday October 10, 2016 @01:41AM (#12675277)

You mean except for 12 or 24 months from now when the OLED iPhone is announced.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by Uupis on Monday October 10, 2016 @02:15AM (#12675372)

With the strong push for color _quality_ (please excuse my lack of a better term) on iOS devices lately, I find the OLED-equipped iPhone rumors a bit confounding.

Last I recall they looked a bit off. Nice, but a bit off. That said, my experience with OLED screens is a bit dated, so maybe the color reproduction has improved.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by B1FF_PSUVM on Monday October 10, 2016 @03:10AM (#12675558)

I expect paulcole is right ...

I was recently in the market for a phone, and considering an iPhone SE. But unfortunately I've got hooked on Lumia OLEDs, so I'm taking one last cheap hit from the rapidly cooling MS pipe while Apple gets that duck lined up ;-)

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by pawadu on Monday October 10, 2016 @06:47AM (#12676278)

Have a cheap "Lumia OLED" myself. There was nothing unfortunate about thay buy. Great display, pretty good phone overall, and the money I saved went to a new tablet.

Also, I now have an excuse to not install the stupid apps friends and family and random guy at the bus stop recommend.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by usaphp on Monday October 10, 2016 @02:38AM (#12675446)

Isn't "burn in" a big drawback for OLED screens?

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by LeifCarrotson on Monday October 10, 2016 @09:05AM (#12676825)

Anecdotally, my Moto X 2014 hasn't suffered anyburn-in, even on the taskbar or buttons, and I haven't heard other owners even commenting on it. Also, I haven't taken any measures to reduce it. I just love it for the near-zero brightness available through my Twilight/Flux app, no problems checking notifications in the dark!

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by Inconel on Monday October 10, 2016 @02:51AM (#12675484)

From what I've read online the newer generation Samsung displays, those from say the last 1-2 years, have supposedly made big strides in dealing with "burn in". Apparently it's much less of an issue now, although still more common than LCD. Also, if I understand correctly, OLED doesn't actually suffer from "burn in" like LCD does, instead it's more "burn out" as the pixels, particularly the blue ones, degrade faster than other colors.

For what it's worth I have a Nexus 6P which uses a Samsung display and I haven't noticed any burn in yet, although I'm probably a very moderate user so that's not really saying much.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by B1FF_PSUVM on Monday October 10, 2016 @03:03AM (#12675534)

The Lumia 925 from 2013 had a gorgeous OLED display, and no burn-in or ghosting problems that I noticed for a couple of years.

They did take care of shifting the (beautiful, built-in) nightstand clock screen a bit around, I think.

(Adjustable color reproduction, you could go for "vivid" if you wanted, normal was fine.)

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by Inconel on Monday October 10, 2016 @03:12AM (#12675566)

I had no idea the Lumia clock screen did that, it's a simple but brilliant solution to mitigate the problem. I'd love to see more work go into subtly shifting persistent UI elements around to avoid the issue. In particular I'd like to see the navigation keys and status bar on Android adopt something like that. I wonder if the UI elements would even need to shift locations or if it would be enough to shift colors so it isn't one particular color that degrades unevenly.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by jshevek on Monday October 10, 2016 @12:29PM (#12678084)

Not in my experience. Years ago I had one device that did get burn in, but it faded over a couple of weeks back to a perfectly normal screen.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by usaphp on Monday October 10, 2016 @01:21PM (#12678475)

You just said that you had a device that got burn in and yet at the same time you are saying that it's not a problem. Waiting couple weeks to get burn in disappear does not sound like a "no problem" thing

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by jshevek on Monday October 10, 2016 @07:30PM (#12680632)

Yes, burn in is not a problem. I've owned many OLED devices, and the only one to get any kind of burn in used older technology. It happened when I changed the settings so the screen would stay on when plugged in. It was barely visible. It went away quickly. All this FUD about burn-in seems like just a boogeyman created by a ill-informed people, expecially in 2016.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by a3_nm on Monday October 10, 2016 @04:29AM (#12675815)

> it breaks the Samsung monopoly over Android

Is there a Samsung monopoly over Android? Apparently Samsung sells about 25% of smartphones https://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-market-share.jsp and 85% of sold smartphones are Android... so certainly not a monopoly.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by Inconel on Monday October 10, 2016 @05:18AM (#12675988)

I think the parent comment was likely referring to Samsung's perceived dominance in the US market. I'm not sure of the US marketshare breakdowns, although it wouldn't surprise me if Samsung had more than 25%, but I think in terms of mindshare in the US it basically boils down to Apple or Samsung. This is probably particularly true for higher end phones.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by on_and_off on Monday October 10, 2016 @05:35AM (#12676044)

Looking at the Play Store dev console for an general public app with a very large user base : out of the 10 most used models, 7 come for Samsung.

It also hurt to see that. The experience on a Samsung phone is not that great :-/

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by thaumasiotes on Monday October 10, 2016 @02:02AM (#12675330)

> I also hope it breaks the Samsung monopoly over Android and let brands like LG, HTC shine

I have a Nexus S (Samsung), a Nexus 4 (LG), and a Nexus 5 (LG again). As you might guess, I bought those without really bothering to consider who the manufacturer was.

The 5, the most recent one, has failed catastrophically and eaten my data. The 4 is suffering from a swelling battery, and will be thrown away as soon as my OnePlus 3 arrives.

The S, two years older than the 4, is still going strong, although it doesn't seem quite up to the demands of modern android software.

To the extent that a "Samsung monopoly" exists, it's not at all clear to me that breaking it would improve anything.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by camillomiller on Monday October 10, 2016 @02:51AM (#12675483)

HTC is done... they accepted to make google pixels without any htc branding. It's not something a healthy company could accept

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by bogomipz on Monday October 10, 2016 @01:42AM (#12675278)

Outside of Apple iPhones, dont most people just go to their carrier's retail outlet if they have an issue with their phone?

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by chrisseaton on Monday October 10, 2016 @08:25AM (#12676633)

Right, and consumer law means any problem with a phone you bought from them is something you need to take up with them rather than Samsung, is that right? You bought your phone from a retailer. Where the retailer got it from and who they complain to about issues is their problem not yours.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by bogomipz on Monday October 10, 2016 @11:53AM (#12677802)

That's correct. Isn't this desirable though?

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by chrisseaton on Monday October 10, 2016 @12:46PM (#12678239)

I think so. The buck always stops with the person you actually dealt with. The retailers can use the same protection when buying their stock in bulk I presume, so defective products get passed all the way back down the line.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by vamur on Monday October 10, 2016 @09:16AM (#12676886)

They will sell the phone in BRICS and EU where consumers are more risk tolerant. Still plenty of profit. Also, I suspect US consumers will buy directly from Samsung anyway as Note 7 is still the best phablet out there.

>>also hope it breaks the Samsung monopoly over Android and let brands like LG, HTC shine.

LG phones have bootloop issues. And HTC phones are overpriced.

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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by vollmond on Monday October 10, 2016 @09:42AM (#12677002)

I love LG phones, but it's going to be hard to convince me to buy another one after the G4 bootloop stuff. On my third one a year in... (TMo keeps replacing them for me)

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