There’s no need to rehash the entire Samsung Galaxy Note7 story here. If you’re alive and breathing, you should already know the story. Yesterday Samsung started sending Note7 users fireproof boxes to return their devices safely. Samsung has asked everyone to power them down and get them back to the company so as to keep everyone safe from a potential safety hazard. For the most part, I think many people are on board with this recall and are complying with Samsung’s request. But there are a few people who refuse to let go of their beloved Note7’s and Josh Dickey is one of them. In an editorial/opinion piece posted on Mashable today, Dickey titles his thoughts, “My Galaxy Note7 is still safer than my car. I’m keeping it.” The editors at Mashable seem to disagree with Dickey’s thoughts enough to place a disclaimer at the top of the post.
Editor’s note: Mashable does not condone keeping your Galaxy Note 7, and in fact has recommended strongly against it. This viewpoint is the author’s alone, and his judgment is obviously questionable.
In his piece Dickey quips about how “people love to imagine themselves in imminent danger,” it’s what gave us “actual tinfoil hats and tens of millions of tweets about Donald Trump.” Dickey then moves on to tells us how driving your car is statistically more dangerous than owning a Note7. He also makes his point by pointing out that Samsung shipped around 2.5 million Note7 devices and less than 100 reports have been filed over exploding devices. To further prove his point that his Note7 is perfectly safe, he marched out a few other stats that can be seen in the screenshot below.
While Dickey makes some incredibly logical points that I am certain many people would agree with in terms of the statistics, what I think he’s missing here is we’re not seeing Chevrolet, Toyota, Honda, Ford, and other car manufacturers voluntarily recalling perfectly safe vehicles. Ford isn’t sending people fireproof crates to ship their F150’s back because they might explode. Yes driving a car poses many inherent risks but there are laws and measures in place to keep us as safe as possible.
When a company stops production of a flagship product because they’re really not sure how deep the issue goes and also asks you to power them down and send them back, then I think it’s time to start listening and take it a bit more seriously. The rate of Galaxy Note7 battery fires is 1 in 25,000 (as Dickey points out), but why risk adding to that number in any way shape or form? Maybe it’s as Dickey puts it “the trauma of reconfiguring yet another new phone.”
Can you imagine someone’s Note7 catching fire on an airline? Perhaps a spark or a smolder falls to the floor igniting the cabin sending people into a panic. Isn’t that a scenario we’d like to avoid? I think Samsung would. But perhaps I’m just fear mongering because I know that “people love to imagine themselves in imminent danger.” Or maybe, just maybe, there’s basic common sense that tells me that Samsung wouldn’t stop production on their biggest name device, wouldn’t recall every device sold, and wouldn’t make this a big deal if it wasn’t really a big deal. Speaking to a friend at Samsung, he indicates the company is taking this seriously and has encouraged us to tell our readers to fully comply with the recall.
Josh Dickey is free to do as he will but I hope this one editorial on Mashable prompts Samsung to do a full on bricking of every Note7 that isn’t returned. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
Last Updated on January 23, 2017.
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