Roger Fingas
Regardless of Apple's public assurances, the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards is probing the matter of sudden iPhone 6s shutdowns in case they represent a battery safety issue, a report said on Wednesday.
"The agency is well aware of recent iPhone issues and is taking a close look at it," an agency official told the The Korea Herald. The person noted however that KATS hasn't yet launched a formal investigation.
Apple is currently offering free battery replacements for iPhone 6s units built between September and October 2015. Apple recently admitted that some iPhones "outside the affected batch" are experiencing problems as well, however, and this week's iOS 10.2 update is believed to be collecting diagnostic data.
The Korean government is likely sensitive about battery issues given problems with local giant Samsung's Galaxy Note 7. Possibly due to a too-tight design, supposedly rushed to beat Apple's iPhone 7, the Note 7 was prone to battery fires and even explosions, which Samsung was unable to solve even after a recall.
The phone was taken off the market at great expense, and Samsung is now offering refunds and exchanges. The company is even issuing software updates to deliberately cripple any remaining units.
Stephen Silver
Christine McKee
Charles Martin
Amber Neely
12 Comments
Apple already said battery got over exposed to air during manufacturing in certain batch and ready to replace,, Samsung probably paid someone in Korean government to do this.
This was done at the request of Samsung.... /s
The Korean Govt. IS basically Samsung.
Can we get real for once? Every single smartphone manufacturer on the planet has issues with batteries from time to time. They all use the same technology packaged in different ways. Many use the same battery supplier. If you go to other platform and OEM support forums you see the same complaints over and over again about the same issues, namely overheating, failure to hold a charge, failure to charge, etc. So why the overt focus on Apple products all the time? Don’t China and South Korea investigate other smartphone issues from other manufacturers? Do those other products have rabid “concern trolls” crawling out of the woodwork for every glitch? Do tech news blogs make those investigations front page news and obsess over them like they do Apple’s problems? How many users are actually experiencing these issues? We should know by now that the Internet amplifies negatives way out of proportion to reality.
This is pure politics and an attempt to "save face" for Korea's national technology brand, Samsung. There is simply no other logical explanation. Unfortunately for Samsung and its fully owned subsidiary, the Korean government, the Note 7 was exactly a "smoking gun" and there was no way to suppress the truth. Even in an era when the truth no longer matters in politics there's no way to gloss over the reality of a smoking phablet.
No amount of state sponsored innuendo against Apple is going to wash away the scorch marks from Samsung's reputation.