Oakley and Intel’s sunglasses put a personal trainer in your ears
Running can be a pretty lonely sport, but you may soon get a companion that’s always ready to go. Oakley and Intel teamed up to create a sunglasses-with-smart-earbuds hybrid that will tell you how you’re doing during your run or bike ride. The Oakley Radar Pace will be available on October 1st for $449. I tried out a preview unit and, even though I’m not a serious runner, I’m actually really excited about what the device can do.
I had a love/hate relationship with my former personal trainer, but it was always great to have someone to turn to for feedback on how I was performing. That coaching is the biggest draw of the Pace system. It monitors your distance traveled by tapping into your phone’s GPS and studies your heart rate if you’re wearing a third-party Bluetooth-enabled monitor. Oakley says this feature “will work with any Bluetooth enabled smartwatch or fitness tracker with a heart rate monitor.”
The Radar Pace has what Intel and Oakley call a dual-initiative system, which, in layman’s terms, means that either you or the device can start a conversation. You can ask the Pace how you’re doing, or it can tell you, without any prompts and after some time, how to improve your progress. And in case you interrupt each other, the Pace will cache your questions while it’s speaking, and get back to you after it finishes what it had to say.
During my demo, Oakley’s rep asked a slew of questions about his pace and cadence while running on a treadmill. The device told him that his stride rate was 85, and then, when he asked how good that was, it told him he needed to speed up and hit 88. All this in a calm, Siri-like voice that, let’s be real, isn’t nearly as motivating as a gruff, buff trainer yelling, “FASTER!” Still, it’s nice to know how you’re doing as you’re running so you can correct your technique during the workout rather than try to fix it afterwards.
Once you’re done, you can tell the Pace to end the workout, and if you haven’t completed the session it designed for you through the companion app (for iOS and Android), it will ask you, tentatively, if you really want to give up (you weakling, you). Through the app, you can create workouts, monitor your heart, cadence, distance and pace history and overlay graphs of each on top of each other. The interface I saw seemed dead-simple, and appeared to have tons of information that avid runners would find useful. Novices like myself will probably be more taken by the glasses themselves, which meet IPx5 standards for resistance against rain, sweat and some splashes.
The lightweight shades don’t have a lot of components onboard. The team didn’t try to squeeze a GPS or heart rate sensors on the Pace, which helped it achieve a 56-gram weight. All it is is the existing Oakley Radar shades with a little micro-USB port on each arm. On the glasses are a touch panel on the left for music playback and Siri control, a three-mic array that Oakley says is optimized to hear you even with wind whipping by at top speed, as well as an embedded system that’s the brains of the Pace. There’s also a battery that will last four hours with continuous music playback and six hours without.
You’ll have to plug in the included earbuds, which can be bent to fit in your ear or stick out parallel to the frame when you don’t need them. During my brief time with them, the ‘buds felt like they were firmly attached to the sunglasses.
I tried on the Radar Pace and it fit snugly on my relatively wide-set face, but was still light and comfortable. Oakley doesn’t yet offer different sizes for the Pace, but said it may do so in future. I had some trouble trying to put the frames on my face, since I had to keep the earbuds from folding out in the process, but once I figured out what was happening it wasn’t difficult to handle.
Oakley isn’t the first to bring fitness tech to your ears. Samsung, SMS Audio and Bragi are just three of the more notable companies working on earphones with heart rate monitors. Although it doesn’t use Intel’s heart rate tracking earbud technology, the Radar Pace is the first to introduce something similar to sunglasses. And while I balked at the $449 price tag (twice the average $220 price of Oakley’s existing non-tech Radar shades), the device itself is pretty unique. It appeals to a niche market of hardcore fitness enthusiasts willing to shell out for fancy gear, but I can see the Pace taking off and gaining widespread appeal if it adds more features and comes down in price. In the meantime, though, this is a wearable that hardcore joggers will likely love.
Facebook and Intel reign supreme in ‘Doom’ AI deathmatch
On the island of Santorini, Greece, a group of AIs has been facing off in an epic battle of Doom.
This is VizDoom, a contest born from one man’s idea: To improve the state of artificial intelligence by teaching computers the art of fragging. That simple notion then spiraled into a battle between tech giants, universities and coders. Over the past few months they’ve all been honing their bots (known as “agents”), building up to one, final death match.
Okay, it was a lot more than one match. But that doesn’t sound nearly as dramatic.
The competition is all about machine visual learning. Just like when you or I play Doom, the agents can only make decisions based on what they “see,” and have no access to information within the game’s code.
There were two “tracks” for agents to compete on, offering very different challenges. Track 1 featured a map known to the teams, and rocket launchers were the only weapons. The agents started with a weapon, but were able to collect ammo and health kits.
Track 2 was a far harder challenge. It featured three maps, unknown to teams, and a full array of weapons and items. While Track 1 agents could learn by repeating a map over and over, agents competing in Track 2 needed more general AI capabilities to navigate their unknown environments. Both maps were played for a total of two hours, with Track 1 consisting of 12 10-minute matches, and Track 2 consisting of three sets of four 10-minute matches (one for each map).
As you might have expected, the winners for both categories came from the private sector. The agent “F1,” programmed by Facebook AI researchers Yuxin Wu and Yuandong Tian, won Track 1 overall, besting its opponents in 10 of 12 rounds. For Track 2, “IntelAct,” programmed by Intel Labs researchers Alexey Dosovitskiy and Vladlen Koltun, put in a similarly dominating performance, taking the victory and winning 10 of 12 rounds. But while Intel and Facebook may have won the overall prizes, there were other impressive performances. Three standout bots, “Arnold,” “Clyde” and “Tuho” came from students.
Arnold
Arnold is the product of Devendra Singh Chaplot and Guillaume Lample, two masters students from Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science. Their team “The Terminators” competed on Tracks 1 and 2, and saw success on both. In fact, Arnold was the only agent outside of Facebook and Intel to win rounds. On Track 1, each bot had to skip one round, and F1’s departure gifted round 3 to Arnold. In round 6, though, Arnold won outright, besting F1 by 2 frags. The result never looked in doubt, though, and Arnold ended in second place, 146 frags behind F1.
Track 2 was where things got interesting. Arnold was competitive in the first map, but IntelAct already had a 19-frag lead heading into map two. On the second map, however, Arnold suddenly came alive. It won the first two rounds, closing the gap down to just 11 frags at one point, and ending the map 15 behind. But it wasn’t to be. IntelAct excelled at the final map, scoring 130 frags in just four rounds, and destroying the plucky underdog’s hopes of pulling off an upset. Arnold lost the overall count 256 to 164, again ending in second place.
Behind the scenes, though, all the work as long as several months ago. Arnold is one of the more ambitious efforts in the VizDoom competition, combining multiple techniques. It’s actually the result of two distinct networks. The first is a deep Q-network (DQN), a technique Google DeepMind pioneered to master 49 Atari 2600 games. The second is an deep recurrent Q-network (DRQN). It’s similar to a DQN, but it processes information in a directed cycle, and uses its internal memory of what’s come before to decide what to do next. Arnold’s DRQN has been augmented to help the agent detect when an enemy is visible in the frame.
In a death match, Arnold can be in one of two states: Navigation (exploring the map to pick objects and find enemies) or Action (combat with enemies), with separate neural networks handling each. The DQN is for navigation. It’s responsible for moving the agent around the level when nothing much is happening, hunting down items and other players. As soon as an enemy shows up on the screen, however, it hands control to the DRQN, which sets about shooting things. Combining these two methods, which can be trained in parallel independently, is the key to Arnold’s success.
But Arnold’s creators aren’t interested in pursuing an unbeatable Doom agent. Instead, they saw VizDoom as a nice application to test their ideas on reinforcement learning. Speaking by phone, Chaplot explained that the networks deployed in Arnold can be applied to robotics in the real world. Navigation and self-localization are a real challenge for machines, and the team is now focused on solving those issues. They’ve published their initial findings from Arnold and VizDoom, and are using what they’ve learned to try and create better robots.
Clyde
Clyde was created by Dino Ratcliffe, a PhD candidate at the University of Essex in the Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence program. A one-person effort, the AI competed on Track 1 only. Though Clyde never won a round, it was extremely competitive throughout, besting Arnold in five rounds and, in one match, losing to F1 by only one frag. It ended the competition in third place with 393 frags, putting it 20 behind Arnold and 166 behind F1.
It could have gone so differently for Clyde. Ratcliffe began development in order to understand “what the state of the art in general video game playing” was for AI right now. He used asynchronous advantage actor-critic (A3C), an advancement in the DQN method that uses multiple neural networks learning in parallel to update a global network.
Ratcliffe told me he took a hands-off approach to training, preferring the agent to learn by itself what enemies are, what death is, what health packs are and so on. “I think it’s dangerous to start encoding your own domain knowledge into these agents as it inhibits their ability to generalize across games,” he explained. “I simply gave it a reward for killing opponents and increasing its health, ammo or armor.”
But a catastrophic failure — Ratcliffe’s PC power supply blew up 24 hours before the competition deadline — caused Clyde to only complete around 40 percent of its training regimen. That meant that it had learned from 30 million frames, rather than the 80 million necessary. The biggest downside of this incomplete training, Ratcliffe explains, is that the agent still occasionally commits suicide. It’s for this reason that Clyde got his moniker — he’s named for the weakest ghost in Pac-Man, who rather than pursuing or holding position, just moves around at random.
Clyde learned a simple form of spawn camping
The fully trained Clyde, which wasn’t submitted, is far stronger. Ratcliffe said he’s observed Clyde using a simple form of “spawn camping,” a much-maligned tactic in multiplayer shooters where you wait at strategic points on a map and kill players as they spawn in. “It notices certain corridors that have spawn points close by and shoots more,” he explained. This behavior is apparently in the competition version of Clyde, but not as noticeable.
Before the results were published, Ratcliffe said he didn’t think Clyde would be competitive, so a third place rosette is definitely above expectations. Ratcliffe has already moved onto a new project: 2D platformers. “I had only started looking into deep reinforcement learning around one week before the competition was announced,” he said. “I pretty much had to learn the whole field in the process of competing, and that was the point of me taking part. So I now have a solid foundation to start my own research this year.” While other agents have mastered 2D platformers, he wants to teach one to learn Mario, and then try to apply that learning set to other games without retraining.
Tuho
The final prize-winning spot was taken by Anssi “Miffyli” Kanervisto, an MsC student at the University of Eastern Finland’s School of Computing. His agent Tuho (Finnish for “doom”) is a one-person effort, created with oversight by Ville Hautamäki PhD, from the same University.
Some of Tuho’s best performances came on Track 1, where it managed to finish second place behind F1 in three rounds. It ultimately placed fourth, just outside of the prize rankings. On Track 2, it didn’t get close to challenging F1 or Arnold. It put in a solid performance, though, on the first and last map, which was enough to balance out a disastrous showing on the second map. Tuho ended up in third place with 51 frags. That’s despite spending the four middle rounds killing itself more than others.
Kanervisto built a complex agent in Tuho, with a navigation system based on multiple techniques. The most important aspect is a dueling DQN — two networks using different methodology to provide a better end result. Tuho’s shooting and firing system is largely based on image recognition, matching potential enemies against a manually recorded library of images.
It was trained to prioritize movement speed in order to get it running in straight lines, and the result, Kanervisto says, is a “well-behaving model that was able to move around and not get stuck, although it struggled with doorways.” But the entire training regimen took place on his personal computer with an Ivy Bridge i7 processor and GTX 760 graphics card. You typically need a very powerful computer, or better yet several, to train an AI at a reasonable speed. Because of this, he was limited in the size of the network and input image size.
Everyone’s a winner
It may be a mostly false cliché, but at least with VizDoom, it feels like everyone here is a winner. Arnold’s creators will receive €300 for their agent’s performance on Track 1, and €1,000 for Track 2, leaving them with around $1,450 to share. Ratcliffe earned €200 ($222) for Clyde’s third place. Tuho bagged Kanervisto €500 ($558) for its exploits.
Some are going home with prizes, but all the teams I’ve spoken to have gained a lot from their experience. Take Olivier Dressler, and his agent “Abyss II.” Dressler is a PhD candidate in Microfluidics (bioengineering) at ETH in Switzerland, and had no previous experience in AI. I asked him what he’d learned from participating in VizDoom. “Literally all my machine learning knowledge” was the answer.
Dressler based Abyss II on the A3C algorithm, and had to learn everything as he went along. This led to some big mistakes, but lots of gained knowledge. One such lesson came in training. “Shooting is required to win,” he explained, “but shooting at the wrong moment (which is nearly every moment) will results in suicide.” The map was full of small corridors, and any explosion nearby will kill the agent. Just overcoming that is a challenge in itself.
Abyss II placed seventh on Track 1, but from speaking to Dressler before the contest, it was apparent he would be happy regardless of the result. “Given the short time frame I really don’t expect my bot to perform particularly well but it has been an amazing challenge,” he added. “It has even paid off more than I expected and I can use this knowledge very well in my current work.”
VizDoom will also have knock-on effects. Google DeepMind and other leaders in machine learning, despite not formally entering the competition, will also have learned a few things. Doom is a highly complex title, and various DQN, DRQN and A3C-based agents have performed to great success.
I don’t know what methods Facebook and Intel employees used to win the top prizes in their categories, but it’s likely we’ll see papers published from them soon. Regardless, as is often the case with AI, the innovative techniques used to win VizDoom will serve to strengthen every researcher’s knowledge of vision-based machine learning.
watchOS 3: How to Share Activity With Your Friends
When watchOS 3 launched alongside iOS 10, it brought a handful of feature additions and speed improvements to the Apple Watch. One of the new social features is a way for users to share their Activity Rings with friends and family through “Activity Sharing.”
Mainly focused in iOS 10’s Activity app, the ability to share workout data nevertheless requires an Apple Watch updated to watchOS 3, and for you to be comfortable with certain people receiving live updates on your fitness activity. When you’re ready to start sharing your Activity Rings, and you’ve updated to both iOS 10 and watchOS 3, follow these steps:
Activity Sharing on iPhone
Open “Activity” on your iPhone.
Navigate to the “Sharing” tab on the bottom right.
Tap the “+” icon in the top right corner to add a friend.
The app will offer suggestions from your contacts of users who may own an Apple Watch, so you can tap one of those or type in someone specific in the text box.
You can include multiple invitations at one time, and once you have everyone included in the “To” box, tap “Send.”
From there, simply wait for your friend to accept the invitation. Afterwards, you’ll begin to see one another’s Calorie, Workout, and Standing rings in the same Sharing tab you sent the invite from. Once you amass a group of friends and family members, you can also sort the data in helpful partitions depending on what you’d like to see. Simply tap “Sort” in the top left corner of the Sharing tab and choose from Name, Move, Exercise, Steps, and Workouts as the primary focus.
Tapping on anyone in the list will bring you into a deeper menu about that individual’s Activity that day. The app will break down each ring, as well as showcase a step count, distance walked, and list any completed workouts or earned achievements. At the very bottom, there’s a few options to mute a friend’s notifications, hide your Activity from them, or delete them as a friend. Within your main friends list you will see your own Activity as well.
An example of a friend’s Sharing card (left), and your own (right)
Activity Sharing on Apple Watch
Although Activity Sharing is more in-depth within Activity on iOS, most of the interactivity of the new social feature takes place on the Apple Watch. Whenever friends begin closing their Activity Rings, completing workouts, and earning achievements, you’ll get push notifications about each accomplishment. From these pop-ups, you can send friendly encouragements (or sly digs) about their hard work.
When you receive an Activity notification from a friend on your Apple Watch, scroll down.
Tap “Reply.”
You can choose from the traditional speech-to-text, emoji, Digital Touch, and Scribble options, or scroll more for some of Apple’s stock Activity responses.
Tap on any phrase to send it.
These responses are integrated directly into Messages in iOS 10, so if you sent “You’re on fire!” for example, Messages would provide slight context above the message with “Mitchel completed a workout.” Until they otherwise mute you for the day, or turn off your notifications completely within Activity on iPhone, each of your friends will receive a notification upon the completion of every workout and earning of every achievement.
If you visit the Activity app on Apple Watch, you can scroll down to get more detailed readouts of each Activity Ring. Swiping right-to-left shows the new Sharing tab, similar to the one on iPhone. You can scroll to see each friend, tap on them for an individualized view, and send a message through a button at the bottom of their profile.
It should be noted that Apple’s stock fitness-related phrases will only appear following a Sharing notification from a friend, and then only on Apple Watch. Any other Messages-related prompt outside of a notification from a friend will simply guide you over to Messages with all of the expected features introduced in the app in iOS 10.
There are plenty of other interesting and notable features to discover in watchOS 3, so be sure to check out the MacRumors roundups for both watchOS 3 and Apple Watch Series 2 to find out more information on each.
Related Roundups: Apple Watch Series 2, watchOS 3
Buyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Buy Now)
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Users Reporting ‘Wrecked Scrolling’ on Logitech Mice After macOS Sierra Update
Some users are reporting performance issues with Logitech’s mice accessories after updating to macOS Sierra, mostly citing problems centered around “laggy” scrolling and some unresponsive customized buttons. Users have specifically mentioned that the M705 Marathon Laser Mouse and Performance Mouse MX are among products affected, but a wider swath of Logitech’s mice lineup is likely included.
The reason behind the problems, and how wide it could reach, is because of an incompatibility issue between the Logitech Control Center app and macOS Sierra. As mentioned by a poster on the Logitech forums, on the latest 3.9.4 software for LCC, the M705’s forward and back buttons were reported as “not working,” while scrolling was being problematic as well.
The M705 Marathon Laser Mouse (left) and Performance Mouse MX (right)
A separate report, posted on StackExchange, detailed a similar issue with Logitech’s mice on macOS Sierra. The user described their mouse as having “soggy inertia” scrolling in native Apple apps, and “choppy” scrolling in third-party apps. Ultimately, they found that updating to macOS Sierra “wrecked scrolling” on the Logitech mouse.
The scrolling behaviour is erratic because I’m actually assaulted by two issues:
In native macOS applications, like Apple Calendar, there is an ”inertia-ish” effect that slows down the scroll and introduces some sort of acceleration-like movement akin to the worst nightmares from Windows 10.
In third-party applications, like Google Chrome, the scrolling is quite fast but not fluid; it’s choppy and non-linear with sudden jumps and stops. Because of this, it feels like the computer is laggy when scrolling a page, but it’s probably due to the way the software scrolls.
The Logitech Control Center Mac app allows users to customize the features of their Logitech accessories — mainly mice and keyboards — along with basic features like notifications for low battery life and when each device has a firmware update. Its incompatibility with Sierra appears to be the source of the problem users are describing online. Unfortunately, Logitech has confirmed that “LCC is not available on Mac Sierra,” and that “there is no release date known” for when it might launch.
Hello all!
Thank you for your feedback. Your comments will be transferred to the appropriate department.As of right now, LCC is not available on Mac Sierra. And there is no release date known.
Once it is available, it will be posted.Thank you all.
The same user who mentioned “wrecked scrolling” did appear to find some solutions to the problem, although they noted that everything was just “temporary band-aid tweaks” in the face of Logitech’s lack of support. The user noted that messing around with the scroll and zoom settings in System Preferences > Mouse could help slightly, as well as checking out System Preferences > Logitech Control Center > Vertical Scrolling.
Tag: Logitech
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UPS Shows Some iPhone 7 Shipments Bouncing Back and Forth Between U.S. and Asia
An increasing number of customers who ordered the iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus have noticed irregular movement on their shipments, as confirmed by multiple tipsters who have contacted us. The peculiar UPS tracking information has also been documented by several Twitter and Reddit users.
MacRumors reader Daniel G., for example, has seemingly seen his iPhone 7 Plus order move between Shanghai, China and Anchorage, Alaska, only to end up back in China. The shipment even made a brief stop in Osaka, Japan, before heading to Louisville, Kentucky en route to Long Island City in Queens.
My iPhone got stuck in China, was sent to Alaska, sent back to China, and is now in Japan. I called Apple and they noted I am one of several who has called about this issue. I placed my order on September 11th. Original shipping estimate said the 27th to the 29th. This was soon changed to September 19th, and then 20th. Once it was delayed, it said shipping date unknown. Apple said they would look into it and call me back.
Other MacRumors readers said likewise in discussion topics titled “My iPhone is on a travel adventure” and “Waiting for UPS.”
Reddit user AlphaAnger, too, shared a nearly identical scenario:
I preordered the iPhone 7 from the Apple website and it shipped out at the beginning of the week. Anyone else’s iPhone just taking a tour of China and Korea? My UPS says it just keeps going back and forth between Korea and China with no estimated ship date.
Twitter user Minton, who shared the UPS tracking information pictured above, has seen his iPhone order travel from Zhengzhou, China to Incheon, South Korea to Louisville, Kentucky, at which point it was seemingly sent back to Hong Kong. The entire movement took place within a span of just three days.
My iPhone went from China -> Korea -> United States -> Hong Kong? That doesn’t seem right. @UPS @Apple pic.twitter.com/1CdS4290S2
— minton (@minton) September 21, 2016
Minton is not alone, as several Twitter users have noticed similarly irregular movement on their iPhone orders this week.
According to UPS, the iPhone I ordered keeps flying back and forth between Zhengzhou, China, and Icheon, South Korea. Seems inefficient. pic.twitter.com/r7PaDlZwga
— Harry McCracken (@harrymccracken) September 21, 2016
My iPhone 7 travel adventure courtesy of @UPS: China > South Korea > Kentucky > Hong Kong > Alaska > ….
— Charlie K. (@callmesailor) September 21, 2016
In some cases, shipments have moved between the U.S. and Asia in only a few hours, which is unrealistic even when accounting for time zone differences. UPS has allegedly told some customers the irregular movement is related to paperwork, but weather and mechanical issues could also be involved.
Whatever the underlying reason may be, the issue appears to be slowing down iPhone deliveries for at least some customers in the United States. Some customers on Twitter have complained that their new iPhone is “stuck in Korea,” while others have vented their frustrations towards UPS’s customer service account.
Related Roundup: iPhone 7
Tag: UPS
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Apple Releases First iOS 10.1 Beta to Public Beta Testers With Portrait Mode for iPhone 7 Plus
Apple today seeded the first beta of an upcoming iOS 10 update to public beta testers for testing purposes, just under two weeks after releasing iOS 10 to the public and one day after providing the iOS 10.1 beta to developers.
Beta testers who have signed up for Apple’s beta testing program will receive the iOS 10 beta update over-the-air after installing the proper certificate on their iOS device.
Those who want to be a part of Apple’s beta testing program can sign up to participate through the beta testing website, which gives users access to both iOS and macOS Sierra betas. Betas are not stable and include many bugs, so they should be installed on a secondary device.
iOS 10.1 introduces a “Portrait” mode for the iPhone 7 Plus, which was first shown off when the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus debuted on September 7. Portrait mode is designed to mimic the kind of shallow depth of field images that can be taken with a high-end DSLR, with a front subject that stands out over a blurred background.
The two cameras in the iPhone 7 Plus capture images, which are scanned by the built-in image signal processor. Machine learning techniques are use to recognize people and/or foreground images, keeping people and main objects in while applying an artful blue or “bokeh” to the background.
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Portrait mode is an iPhone 7 Plus-only feature because it requires two images to create a depth map. iOS 10.1 also likely includes bug fixes and behind-the-scenes updates to address issues that have popped up since release.
iOS 10 offers features like a redesigned Lock screen, a Siri SDK to allow third-party apps to integrate with Siri, and a completely overhauled Messages app with stickers, a full App Store, Digital Touch, Bubble Effects, and more. Other new additions include a dedicated “Home” app for HomeKit users, new facial and object recognition capabilities in Photos, and redesigned Maps and Apple Music apps.
Related Roundup: iOS 10
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Apple Releases First macOS Sierra 10.12.1 Beta for Public Beta Testers
Apple today seeded the first beta of an upcoming macOS Sierra update to public beta testers, one day after seeding the beta to developers and two days after releasing the first version of macOS Sierra to the public.
Beta testers who have signed up for Apple’s beta testing program will receive the macOS Sierra beta through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store.
Those who want to be a part of Apple’s beta testing program can sign up to participate through the beta testing website, which gives users access to both iOS and macOS Sierra betas. Betas should not be installed on a primary machine due to the potential for instability.
macOS Sierra 10.12.1 appears to focus on bug fixes and performance improvements for issues that have popped up since macOS Sierra was first released. It also includes album support in Photos for the new Portrait feature in iOS 10 on the iPhone 7 Plus.
macOS Sierra is a major update that introduces features like Siri support, cross device copy paste, improved iCloud functionality, the ability to unlock a Mac with the Apple Watch, an Optimize Storage option, and more.
Related Roundup: macOS Sierra
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AC roundtable: How the Note 7 recall has hurt Samsung’s brand
The AC editors sound off on the Note 7 recall, and how it has hurt Samsung’s brand.
We’re now over three weeks into Samsung’s recall of the Note 7 due to serious concerns over faulty batteries. 1 million phones in the U.S. alone were recalled, and some 2.5 million worldwide had to be replaced. While the day-to-day news of exploding phones has settled down a bit, Samsung now has to deal with the lasting effect this massive recall has on its brand.
Just how Samsung comes out of this Note 7 recall to continue to sell phones around the world will be interesting to follow, and there’s certainly a chance that these cases of exploding Note 7s have a lasting effect on future flagship phone sales. To get a bit of perspective on the situation, we’ve rounded up responses from the editors here at Android Central to see how everyone feels Samsung will come out of this.
So the question is simple: how do you think the Note 7 recall has damaged Samsung’s reputation?
Alex Dobie
With something as unprecedented as the Galaxy Note 7 recall, it’s difficult to map out where things will go from here. Everyone, Samsung included, is in uncharted territory. I’ve said before that I think the Note 7, product-wise, is already basically a lost cause. This will always be that exploding Samsung phone — resultingly a figure of fun, and something travelers are reminded off each time they take a flight. (You may use electronic devices in airplane mode — except for that one made by Samsung that that might explode at any time and kill us all.)
People on planes are being reminded daily that the Note 7 is a fire hazard.
And it remains to be seen how long the Note 7 airline “ban” — which, let’s be clear, includes your safe unit with the green battery icon — will last. My guess would be months not weeks.
Even if consumers were completely rational and accepted that the new, “safe” Note 7s are indeed safe, the phone now comes with legitimate baggage in terms of using it while flying, and in some cases even when taking the train. That’s still a legitimate reason to pass on what’s legitimately a very good phone, and buy another very good phone — like an iPhone 7 Plus or an LG V20 — instead. There’ve been headlines this past week with analysts predicting Note 7 sales will total up to only a fraction of that of the Note 5. That’s just common sense at this point.
But I do think that, barring any more nasty surprises, the lasting damage to Samsung as a brand and other Galaxy products by association will be limited. Samsung’s marketing strategy in many countries has pivoted back to a heavier focus on the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge — two great phones that people are still buying. Samsung will have no choice but to mention it at the next big press conference, whether it’s the Galaxy S8 in February or something at CES in January. Expect stats about the speed of Samsung’s response, the vast numbers of phones successfully exchange, and Samsung’s commitment to customer safety. After which the company will hope to draw a line under the whole thing and move on.
The extent to which it’s able to do that will determine how next year’s Note will fare. As Samsung’s pointed out on more than one occasion, Note customers are among its most loyal, and I agree that the hard core of people who love this device will be largely unswayed. But the Note’s success has come from its mainstream appeal too, and only time will tell whether the average consumer will remember Samsung’s exploding phone twelve months on.
Jerry Hildenbrand
It depends on who you ask.
Among the technology-savvy internet crowd Samsung is polarizing. That happens when a company gets so big it influences a market. A large portion of the people doing the talking would back Samsung if it kicked a box of kittens. An equally large portion would fault Samsung if it showered the same kittens with love, affection and catnip instead. Neither of those groups has an opinion that counts for much when looking at the overall picture. For that, you need to look to the buying public.
The regular consumers aren’t interested in history as long as what they buy today works.
Those folks are going to forget and not even have an opinion. The regular folks who work 40 hours a week, go to soccer games on Saturday and have a phone they use to chat with friends or catch Pokemon aren’t interested in history as long as what they’re buying today works for them.
I like to point at Toyota here, because it’s such an extreme example. It had “issues” with the with some models where the cars would accelerate until they reached top speed or hit something to stop them. People died. It took Toyota a while to sort out the problem, much to the dismay of people who make laws and levy fines. But people quickly forgot and now you see Priuses everywhere.
People also forgot that in the end, it was the floor mats and there was nothing wrong with the rest of the cars, but this did bring some major safety improvements to Toyota vehicles. Or they didn’t care about it. Apathy is a hell of a drug.
Samsung will be just fine. The Note 7 is now and forever a dud that you shouldn’t buy. Not because it’s a bad phone or the new models will explode, but because Samsung will be quick to drop support and forget it ever existed. But the Note 8 will be the best (and worst) thing the internet has ever seen, and people that want a bigger phone with a “pencil” who pay no attention to the internet will be happy buying it. The same can be said for the rest of Samsung’s Galaxy models.
Andrew Martonik
The Galaxy Note 7 recall process is damaging, for sure, but I think the biggest pain will be felt simply for this release, and the lingering distrust of Samsung going forward will be minimal. Though it has dragged on for over three weeks now, the public as a whole has a short memory — the immediate future of Note 7 sales isn’t looking bright, but after a couple months with a few price drops they’ll be selling at a solid clip once again; all will be back to “normal.” Note 7 sales won’t reach anywhere near the volumes expected or predicted based on early sales before the recall, but to think the phone is entirely dead is a bit of a stretch.
This will destroy Note 7 sales, but future phones will be just fine.
More importantly for Samsung’s overall mobile business, I honestly don’t see any major issues heading into the next flagship release, be it the Galaxy S8 or something else. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if the company chose to address things head-on during the announcement with extra information about how it’s improved its manufacturing quality control standards since the recall.
Samsung hasn’t necessarily showered itself in glory this past month, and has clearly made a few missteps on some specifics of the recall process, but considering the variables at play it did a pretty damn good job with things. Most general consumers will see from a high level that Samsung did the right thing in recalling unsafe phones, and I don’t see this weighing heavily on their future buying decisions.
Daniel Bader
Samsung is a huge monolithic company stepped in the Korean traditions of honor and duty. But it is also a public entity with a board, shareholders, and hundreds and thousands of employees, many of which worked either directly or indirectly on the Galaxy Note 7. The irony of this whole recall is that the problem lies not with Samsung itself, which didn’t manufacture the affected batteries, but with the culture of unrelenting innovation that strives to win at all and any costs.
The hit to Samsung’s reputation will be short and placid, especially after the holiday marketing push.
The Bloomberg article that claims Samsung pushed its suppliers too hard, too fast in order to beat Apple’s iPhone 7 to market misses the point that the Note has always been an August baby, and that the Korean giant has always been ruthless about its product releases. The Note 7 is but one of dozens of phones the company releases annually, and though it may be the most expensive it is by no means the most popular.
All that is to say any hit to the company’s reputation will be short and placid, especially after the inevitable marketing blitz that is sure to hit the market this holiday season. There may be some folks reticent to pick up a Galaxy for a while but there will be many others eager to pick up the Note 7 at a massive discount, or with generous incentives. Samsung can and will do these things, because being at the top of the world is tenuous, and this is an opportunity too important to fail.
Florence Ion
We can’t ignore the lasting impact that the Galaxy Note 7 recall will have on the Samsung brand. The company is a major electronics manufacturer in the U.S. It doesn’t just make smartphones; it makes appliances, components, televisions, and other sorts of gadgets. It has been a trusted brand for so long. I don’t necessarily believe that this recall will put the South Korean company over the edge, but I can already see a radical shift in opinion.
The best thing Samsung can do right now is focus on delivering quality, responsive customer service.
The narrative across mainstream news sites is that Samsung was slow to react after the initial exploding incident. The Wall Street Journal reported that Samsung failed “to coordinate efforts with U.S. safety authorities,” which in turn “led to delays in providing replacement devices.” And the New York Times wrote of Samsung’s “stumbles” in recalling the phablets. It even reached out to Jennifer Shecter, a spokeswoman for Consumer Reports, who pointed out that Samsung hadn’t immediately notified the government of the exploding battery issue, nor had it initially offered a “clear fix.”
I’d be terrified to use a Samsung product after reading from two major news outlets that the company had failed at recalling a potentially deadly device. Just like Chipotle’s sales suffered after its massive E.coli recall (I haven’t eaten there since), I imagine Samsung will also feel the effects in its sales numbers over time. Its global shares have already been affected and it’s too bad, considering the Galaxy S7 was such a knockout.
The best thing Samsung can do right now is focus on delivering quality, responsive customer service so that its current users feel supported. It’s helped companies like Dell, Toyota, and even IKEA through its own recalls. Samsung also needs to develop a better contingency plan, because as we continue making consumer electronics en masse, this sort of thing is bound to happen again.
What do you think? Has the Note 7 recall hurt Samsung’s reputation beyond repair, or is this something to rebound from? Let us know in the comments!
Samsung Galaxy Note 7
- Galaxy Note 7 recall: Everything you need to know
- Samsung Galaxy Note 7 review
- The latest Galaxy Note 7 news!
- Here are all four Note 7 colors
- Complete Galaxy Note 7 specs
- Join the Note 7 discussion in the forums!
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Nextbit Robin
- Nextbit Robin review
- Nextbit Robin unboxing
- Nextbit Robin specs
- Join the Nextbit Robin forums
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Magnetique on Gear VR: Immerse yourself in a comic book
Have you ever wondered what it feels like to be inside a comic book?
VR allows us to experience the world in a completely new fashion. Unlike the past where places you’d never traveled were available only in photographs, or movies, now you can feel like you’re actually there from within VR experiences. So it makes sense that comic books aren’t exempt from that. Magnetique brings you inside the comic so that you can look around and feel like you are actually inside the story instead of reading it off of a page, and we’ve got all the details.
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