Samsung killed the Note 7 today. Not “recalled,” killed. Dead product line. The replacement units for the fire-prone phones also caught fire, including one on an airliner, and after a second recall in two months Samsung pulled the plug on the whole model: production halted, refunds for everyone, an estimated multi-billion-dollar write-off. The engineering post-incident question is brutal and familiar: the first RCA blamed one battery supplier, they switched suppliers, and the fires continued, which means the root cause analysis was wrong while the fix shipped at global scale. A postmortem that names the wrong cause is worse than no postmortem; it converts confidence into fuel. (Literally, here.)
Airlines now announce the phone by name pre-flight. That’s a new tier of incident severity: FAA-recognized.
Elsewhere: Google went full hardware. The Pixel launch event pitched “made by Google” phones with the Assistant baked in, plus Home, plus Daydream VR. Google copying Apple’s integration playbook while Apple copies Google’s services playbook; the giants are converging on the same shape from opposite directions.
F1 title fight: alive and terrifying between Hamilton and Rosberg. More in fifteen days, when I will either be insufferable or inconsolable.
TIL: RCA validation, how do you test that your root cause is the cause before scaling the fix? Samsung’s answer arrived on fire. Reproduce before you remediate. Slow is smooth.