DTNS Weekly Tech Update - 10/13/2016

DTNS WEEKLY TECH UPDATE

Hey all, thanks for reading. This is the weekly newsletter companion to Daily Tech News Show at http://dailytechnewsshow.com/

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This week 

• In case you missed it: What Oculus Announced
• The Samsung battery timeline from the last week
• Closer Look: Why lithium ion batteries are a big problem. 

ESSENTIAL TECH

OCULUS RIFFS

Oculus made several announcements at Oculus Connect Thursday. -Oculus will sell earphones designed for VR for $49 shipping later this year.
-Oculus touch controllers available for preorder October 10 for $199 shipping December 6th bundled with an extra sensor and the gamnes VR Sports Challenge and the Unspoken.
-Extra sensors will be available for $79 shipping December 6th, allowing room scale.
- Oculus also lowered the specs require for the Rift. Oculus has used a new software API called "asynchronous spacewarp" to let the Rift run on any machine with an Nvidia 960 or greater, and an intel i3-6100 (or AMD FX4350) or greater.    
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/10/oculus-lowers-minimum-rift-specs-using-asynchronous-spacewarp-tech/

Oculus is also developing a prototype of a standalone VR headset. Mark Zuckerberg called it "A standalone virtual reality product category that is high-quality and that is affordable and that you can bring with you out into the world." Oculus is also going to cover Unreal Engine license fees for any app sold through the Oculus Store for up to the first $5 million in gross revenue and Oculus developing ReactVR for developing VR websites and VR browser called Carmel.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/06/zuckerberg-teases-a-prototype-standalone-oculus-vr-headset/?ncid=rss

https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/06/oculus-webvr/

The Samsung Timeline

Friday October 7
-Samsung announced it would beat profit estimates for Q3 despite the Galaxy Note 7 recall.
-The US Consumer Product Safety Commission announced it will "expeditiously investigate the incident" of a phone overheating on a Southwest Airlines plane.
-Sprint announced it would except any Note 7 including replacement models for return.

Weekend October 8-9
- 5 reported instances of the replacement Note 7s catching fire in the US

Monday October 10
- Samsung temporarily halted production of the Galaxy Note 7
The company said it was "adjusting the Galaxy Note7 production schedule" to address quality and saftey concerns.
- Following Sprints lead, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile confirmed they will allow the return of any Galaxy Note 7 and ceased sales and exchanges.

Tuesday October 11
- Samsung halted sales and production of the Galaxy Note 7.
- The Korea Agency for Technology and Standards and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued warnings not to use the new Note 7s due to safety concerns.
- Oculus updated its Gear VR app to prevent it from being used on Note 7 models.

Wednesday October 12
- Samsung released revised earnings guidance. Q3 2016 projected operating profit at a year-over-year decrease of 30%, the first decline in a year.
- The New York Times reported Samsung had not been able to reproduce the Note 7 problem and therefore cannot determine what has been causing it.
- Samsung confirmed to Motherboard that Note 7 phones will not be repaired, refurbished, or resold.

Thursday October 13
- Samsung is offered US Note 7 customers an added credit of $100 if they exchanged the Note 7 for a Samsung device.



CLOSER LOOK - SAMSUNG ISN'T THE PROBELM, BATTERY TECH IS

I come neither to bury nor praise Samsung. There are many pertinent questions about how the company handled its recent problems with the Note 7 and why even the replacement models failed to stop the batteries from self-destructing.

Without excusing Samsung, I want to focus on the root of the problem here: lithium-ion batteries. Samsung is guilty of is making a phone that overheats and smokes more often than other devices with lithium ion batteries.

Chemical and Engineering News in 2013 cited the failure rate of Lithium ion batteries at one in 10 million cells.

http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i6/Assessing-Safety-Lithium-Ion-Batteries.html

Samsung shipped approximately 1 million Note 7s in the US and received 96 reports of phones overheating. That's 960 times as many as the average.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/samsung-halts-galaxy-note-7-shipments-phones-catching-fire/

But Samsung is only the most recent product line to fail to keep lithium ion batteries in check.

In January 2014 a lithium ion battery that was part of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner overheated at Narita airport in Japan, grounding the entire fleet until fire safeguards were put in place.

After two fires, Tesla had to update software to protect against fires in its batteries caused by road debris damaging the undertray where the battery is stored.

In 2006 Sony recalled millions of battery packs after several hundred overheated and caught fire.

https://www.cnet.com/news/why-are-hoverboards-exploding-and-catching-fire/

Not to mention fires in so-called hoverboards with non-certified lithium ion batteries.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/01/economist-explains-19

WHY DO WE USE THESE AGAIN?

Despite these risks, the percentage of incidents is very small.  Most of you have never had a battery overheat. And they provide a lot of energy for the cost. Here's the simple version of how they work.

Lithium ion refers to a family of batteries, not just one kind. Basically it's a kind of battery where the negative and positive electrodes host lithium ion. The ions move from negative to positive during discharge and are stored in the positive end. During charging, the ions are moved from the positive end back to the negative end. Alternating layers of negative and positive nodes are separated by a film and either stacked in flat batteries or "jelly rolled" in cylindrical cells.

Each battery cell has a safe voltage range usually 3.6 to 3.7 volts. Repeated overcharge can lead to overheating but most all devices have safeguards to stop charging even when plugged in. Multiple cells are usually packed together to deliver higher voltages or capacity. Sometimes the cells are packed into modules which are then hooked together into the "battery." So suffice to say it gets complex in there.

http://www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/fire-statistics-and-reports/research-reports/hazardous-materials/other-hazards/lithium-ion-batteries-hazard-and-use-assessment

One hazard that can occur if batteries are recharged too fast-- or too much-- is the accumulation of material at the electrode that can bridge the gap and short circuit the battery. Damage to the battery like dents or ambient heat can cause gas buildup, swelling and all that can lead to overheating and fire.

To guard against these risks batteries are equipped with things like gas vent mechanisms, current interrupters and separators for the electrodes.

Economic pressure to make batteries smaller leads to thinner separators. That is one of the factors cited for the 2006 Sony battery recall.  Another problem with the Sony batteries was improper configuration and heat management. Sony was making batteries for multiple manufacturers and not all manufacturers seemed to follow best practices in implementing batteries.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/09/the_explosive_history_of_lithium_ion_batteries.html

The issues run deep and are complex but I hope you get the idea. Lithium ion batteries are a hard technology to keep safe. It's not hard to make mistakes. And small mistakes can lead to fire risk.

ANY ALTERNATIVE?

Is there something else we can use? No. Not that has the capacity and flexibility of use that lithium ion has. Not yet anyway.

New battery technologies are constantly being researched and often show promise, but none yet has come to market. And other researchers are pouring time and money into ways to make lithium ion batteries safer.

Earlier this year Scientists at Stanford University described a method using polyethelene film and metal particles that move away from each other as they heat thus naturally cutting off conductivity when heating risks fire.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/09/the_explosive_history_of_lithium_ion_batteries.html

Other technologies like Hydrogen fuel cells, Sodium ion, Potassium ion and Lithium sulfer are touted as viable replacements, but none are there yet. Navigant estimates that lithium ion batteries market will grow to almost $15.8 billion by 2024.

So the key is to be aware of the risks. Hold companies to better quality control. And hope for a breakthrough in battery tech.