Galaxy Note 7: Do You have to fear the battery of the phone? – CNET in Spanish

Without a doubt, you’ve already heard the news: Samsung has canceled permanently the production of the phones, Galaxy Note 7, after five of the alleged units to be “safe” replacement exploded. Samsung and the Commission of Consumer Product Safety (CPSC, for its acronym in English) are asking the owners of a Galaxy Note 7 to turn off the phones. (Those who already have a Note 7 can change it on the other device).

But here’s the thing: no matter what phone you have (Android, a

iPhone

or even a BlackBerry), it is very likely that your phone includes a li-ion battery that is flammable. The same thing happens with most of the tablets,

notebooks

and other portable devices.

If the batteries of the Note 7 are melting — despite the fact that a handful of these — it is inevitable to ask: what will be my phone next to burn? What you’ll wake up in the middle of the night to find your table on fire?

The answer: it is very unlikely that this happens. Phone batteries have a low statistical probability of exploit, even those that are located in the original phones of Note 7 (which came out before the replacement units).

however, it is not impossible.

Explosions unlikely (of course, until they happen to you)

last month, a Samsung representative told Yonhap News that only 0.1 percent of all phones Note 7 that were sold had a factory defect in the battery. This equates to less than 1,000 units of million phones Note 7 involved in the first call the withdrawal from the market.

of Course, this figure must be updated now that some replacement units have been burned. But if you opt-out the problematic Note 7, only 1 in 10 million cells of li-ion batteries are likely to fail, according to the expert of batteries Brian M. Barnett, which was cited by Chemical & Engineering News in 2013. That represents 0.00001 percent.

it Is a percentage of probability very, very low. Then, why is there this preoccupation? Because we’re surrounded by these batteries of lithium ion rechargeable. Some tools use these batteries from hearing aids to greeting cards. Your laptop, your tablet, your horn Bluetooth and all smart phone you’ve ever had have used a lithium battery. Before the Note 7, when was the last time you’ve heard of them to explode one of these devices?

Larger battery fires can do serious damage: Jessica Horne lost her home in Louisiana after the hunter hoverboard Fit Turbo your child to explode in 2015.

WGNO

At CNET we take care of analyzing technology and test devices, and you can say that these situations do happen — but very rarely. In August, Intel asked for the withdrawal of the wearable Basis Peak due to overheating problems. And in 2015, Nvidia requested the removal of almost all of the tablets Nvidia because it was felt that their battery was not secure.

But it is know that some phones are, in effect, have been exploited, and that this has become a key part of modern life precisely what increases the anxiety.

“No one expects a battery to cause problems,” says John Drengenburg, director of consumer safety at Underwriters Laboratories (UL). “Clearly, it’s something very rare, but when something like that happens, it causes a lot of impact and acquire a lot of visibility”.

it Is one thing when the structural integrity of a phone is compromised. That was what happened when our Droid Turbo 2 burned up when we try on purpose to break your screen “unbreakable”. (The screen survived in general, despite the fact that the battery is not ran with the same luck). Similarly, a man in Sydney, Australia, suffered burns after he fell of his bike and broke his iPhone 6.

But the biggest problem is when the phones are burned in a spontaneous way. The Note 7 is perhaps not the only phone in explode this month: there was an iPhone that was burned in New Jersey and another in California. It is said that both phones are the iPhone 6 Plus, which started selling in 2014.

(CNET has not confirmed independently, the details of neither of these two incidents. Apple refused to comment on the matter).

“When we consider the hundreds of millions of phones, notebooks, hoverboards and other consumer products that are available in the market, and compare it with the number of incidents and retirements, we can say that the fires from lithium ion are rare. But, they are serious incidents when they occur”, said Scott Wolfson, spokesman for CPSC, to CNET.

auto Crashes and explosions of gas

what, Then, the idea is to get rid of your smartphone and your laptop, to go back to using a landline and an old Nintendo Game Boy with AA batteries and a PC? Without a doubt, that is an option.

of course, you can also stop driving (there is a possibility of 1 in 10,000 of dying in a car accident). And I certainly hope that in your house there is no entry of natural gas, since these also can exploit.

you understand Me, isn’t it? These are tragedies that also happen. But, like the fire of a battery of phone, it is unlikely that these things will pass on to you.

May not be worth the risk.

Josh Miller/CNET

the exception to The rule

Still, it makes no sense to tempt fate in regards to the Galaxy Note 7. Especially when this phone has the greatest range of defective batteries of any consumer device that we know of.

According to the Battery University (in English), the defect rate of the battery notebooks from Sony that also exploded was 1 in 200,000, or 5 per million. The gigantic recall of the battery of Nokia (the largest in history, according to reports) was based on a defect rate of less than 3 per million.

” do you Remember the official Samsung that said that up to 0.01 percent of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 original may have the defect? This represents 100 per million, or one for every 10,000, the chance that there is of dying in a car accident in a typical year in the united States.

If you are concerned about any other phone, you most likely don’t have to fear. But if you have a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 in the hand, it is better to return it now.