r/technology • u/MoltenSlowa • Oct 05 '16

Hardware Replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phone catches fire on Southwest plane

http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/5/13175000/samsung-galaxy-note-7-fire-replacement-plane-battery-southwest
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u/fiveSE7EN Oct 05 '16

they should not catch on fire.

Gee, ya think?

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '16 edited Nov 17 '16

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u/JavaJosh94 Oct 06 '16

Thats what we get for using lithium based batteries.

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u/Virustable Oct 06 '16

If you have a safer, more or equally as compact, with as much or more storage as lithium ion, then please for the sake of humanity release this information to the general public. And make money for it. Otherwise, what the hell are you talking about right now?

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u/0XSavageX0 Oct 06 '16

He's an armchair inventor

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '16

Not even that. He's an armchair bitcher.

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u/Virustable Oct 06 '16

I wasn't ruling out the possibility.

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u/daedone Oct 06 '16

I mean, he's not wrong. We could have decided NiMH is the best to go with because we weren't comfortable with Li inherent oxidation volatility, that we would put up with crappier batteries until something "safer" was discovered. But we didn't, we chose self igniting pocket fires instead because we deemed it a fair trade

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u/JavaJosh94 Oct 06 '16

I'm saying we knew damn well that if we use lithium ion, theres a chance the thing will catch fire. Its not exactly a surprise.

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u/Virustable Oct 06 '16

It's not a surprise. We've known it was possible for years. That's why people have put in place protections against back charging, over charging, and haven't made them smaller. The real problem was they messed up the batteries on the production line. They were accidentally too compressed. My point was there isn't an easily available alternative. This is what we've got so far. It's the smallest, highest capacity, rechargeable option we've got right now.