Southwest plane evacuated after Samsung Note 7 catches fire. It was a recall replacement

I hope you mean asbestos books and magazines, because the others are just kindling.

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Good point. However, Asbestos is a hazardous substance. A terrorist could shred an asbestos magazine and release carconogens into the cabin, dooming some unknown percentage of the passengers to a slow death from lung cancer 20 years from now. So asbestos must be banned along with paper.

i guess that leaves staring out the window while bored out of your skull for the entire flight. This is our inevitable doom, unless we give up on flying and take the train instead. But at least we will be safe from terrorism and self-incinerating phone batteries!

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No, it does not. Some phones have glued on doors and the only way to remove them is by heat or destruction. Some of them have glued in batteries which may need heat to remove safely. Apple uses nonstandard screws. Are you going to hunt for a trilobal screwdriver while a phone is turning black and cracking, and then use it to undo the screws?
I have gone back to easily replaceable batteries after changing the battery on a Samsung - I have the tools and the manual skills but it still took me 20 minutes not having done it before.
Outside the US I do not believe that carriers repair phones. They go back to the manufacturers.

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A sand bucket and tongs would be a good start.Low tech but very effective; the ability of sand to absorb thermal energy and chemicals is truly amazing, which is why it was widely used.

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On my THL, the back pops off, but then you have to disassemble the chassis to get the battery out.

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Being powered down doesn’t mean much. It doesn’t have a mechanical power switch.

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To clarify that for the nontechnical, the power switch is just a momentary button and something on the phone has to be powered up all the time to look at its status. A fault in the hardware can mean that the phone is drawing power all the time it’s supposedly turned off.

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As best I can tell, every Chinese part supplier regards cheaping out on quality control as a normal part of everyday business.

The book “Poorly Made in China” was a fascinating read - written by a Chinese speaking American who acted as an interface between American companies and Chinese suppliers. He described a constant battle with suppliers who would start with an excellent product and then start seeing what they could get away with.

Admittedly he was at the very bottom of the market - supplying the crap that $2 shops sell - so he probably encountered particularly poor quality.

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Why does every headline say it’s a replacement phone, when there’s no supporting evidence except the owner’s claim? He’d say it was either way. He wants to avoid liability for the disrupted flight.

Let’s wait for him to produce his paperwork before concluding what really happened.

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too dangerous, what if the passenger is a terrorist scouting potential targets?

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You remind me of the guy who bought a sample air cooled Diesel engine from China. It was well made and had SKF bearings. He bought 5 more, all of which failed in minutes because the bearing rollers were mild steel.
It may not be the “original” supplier. The original supplier gets overloaded and turns to subcontractors, and that’s where it goes wrong. A former colleague on a standards committee once had the job of sourcing cathode ray tubes in Hong Kong. He found a supplier who could manufacture to standard and promptly organised a contract to take their entire output. Then he discovered via the grapevine that they had already contracted to sell their entire output to five other companies.
Chinese engineers can be excellent. Chinese managements…

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You ever have a paper cut? TSA-compliant book and magazines must be printed on soft tissue paper.

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Early Stage Capitalism?

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With lithium ion batteries a bucket of water would work as well… (lithium metal, no, but lithium ion, yes)

From my days being responsible for OHS - yes, but water splashes and sand doesn’t.

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In that excellent and predictive science fiction novel by Pohl and Kornbluth, The Space Merchants, the windows were replaced with screens displaying adverts. Even P&K did not foresee that people would be persuaded to pay for their own screens.

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Photos of the box the phone allegedly came in show the black box that indicates a replacement phone vs. a new one.

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In fact, it could be much worse. “Naked” batteries stuffed into handbags/backpacks etc, along with all the random metallic things you have removed from your pockets in order to clear security would seem to be a bit of a risk.

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I just flew yesterday, and there was a sign at the TSA checkpoint in San Diego that the FAA has banned Samsung Galaxy Note 7s from being turned on or charged in flight, and were not permitted in checked baggage. My Samsung Galaxy Prime (looks similar but not identical, fortunately) got extra scrutiny.

Apparently they didn’t make that up: http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/16/12947094/faa-bans-turning-on-samsung-galaxy-note-7-flight

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Can you imagine what would have happened if the man shouting that his phone had caught fire had looked Arab? He would probably have been shot by an air marshall in seconds, if the panicking crowds hadn’t gotten to him first.

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