Interpreting the design defects of Samsung Galaxy Note2 "Font Gate"

    March 2013, Samsung Galaxy Note II (gt-n7100) mobile phone users complained that their mobile phone suffered "font damage" and "brick", the warranty period is still required to repair at their own expense, the subsequent 4-5 months related to a substantial increase in complaints. Last December, Samsung Galaxy SIII (gt-i9300) had similar problems. Baidu search keyword "Samsung font door" related to the results of more than 530,000.      In the face of more and more user complaints, Samsung officials insist that their products have no quality problems, "consumer report" reporters in Samsung officials, distributors, maintenance points and other places heard the argument is contradictory. According to the industry's opinion, the so-called "font door" behind the incident hidden in the Samsung mobile phone more serious problems.      "Font door" or "chip door"?      May 24, Mr. Xing of Changsha, Hunan, told Consumer reports that the Samsung Galaxy Note II, which he purchased last October, had been in use for more than half a year, without any sign of encountering a typical "font gate": "After the phone call found that the screen is not bright, The charge does not respond, then the mobile phone will ' change bricks '.      After the repair, maintenance center told Mr. Xing, mobile phone "font" was damaged, need to be replaced. Mr. XING asked the staff to explain what is "the font", the other side took out a thumb fingernails size chip Shang Mr Show, "he told me this chip is the font."      "In fact, the word ' font ' itself is ridiculous, in the smartphone industry, the concept is not first." "Mobile Internet Industry Alliance Secretary-General Yi in an interview, said," mobile phone development into the era of the intelligent machine, there is no "word", this is the concept of the era of functional machine. "Yi that" the word "damaged" is nonsense.      In his view, the staff to show Mr. Xing, the so-called "font" is actually a mobile phone EMMC flash chip. "The memory chip damage is called the ' font Door ', which in a sense is the severity of the problem to say light." "Yi that the concept itself is chaotic, and no one can prove that the mobile phone" brick "is caused by" font damage. "      Former Motorola senior engineer Zhangxiaolong also think "font door" This name is not very accurate. He explained that in the smartphone era, the memory chip usually stores a small code and a font, so the line is usually called the memory chip "font."      "But in the current case of Samsung, it should be built into these two phonesFlash memory chip out of the question, and the flash memory chip contains almost all the program, the equivalent of the phone's hard drive, if the hard drive is broken, the phone will certainly not start. "     Zhangxiaolong and Lee agree that the so-called" font damage "is to dilute the seriousness of the problem," chip damage is actually a more serious problem. "      chip hidden trouble or due to product design defects      Tianjin, Miss Wei purchase Galaxy SIII mobile phone 7 months later also encounter "Change Bricks": "a black screen, and then boot, on the card in the boot screen, At the same time, the back cover is getting hotter, and it has been tried several times. "Miss Wei's phone is still under warranty, but the local aftermarket repair point is said to have suspected that it has been brushed, does not apply to Samsung sales regulations, she must pay for replacement parts."     , like Veshian, appeared in the media reports and forum complaints in the "font damage" users have to pay not cheap maintenance costs. The problem has also spread across the globe, with users around the world posting complaints on the XDA Developer Forum and the Samsung Developer Forum. "I hate Samsung and won't buy any of Samsung's products any more!" "An affected Pakistani user wrote in the Samsung Android Developer forum after the Samsung forum administrator quoted Samsung's official statement to give the user a response.      The relevant statement is in fact Samsung's response to the potential vulnerabilities of the Galaxy SIII, Galaxy Note II, which had previously been exposed to the Orion Exynos 4412 chip, that software updates may have blocked security vulnerabilities , but it is clear that there is no way to solve the problem of chip damage continuously.      Communications industry observer, flying Elephant Network President Xiang to the "consumer report" reporter said, "from a technical point of view, Samsung's flash memory chip damage event causes more complex, on the one hand, may be a hardware failure, on the other hand, there may be a bug caused by the software itself, It is difficult to judge if there is no specific study. A similar view was expressed by executives of a mobile phone manufacturer who had been reluctant to be named.      "International Financial Times" India edition analysis of last December Samsung Galaxy SIII phone chip damage case, will likely cause to the motherboard design defects. "The reason Samsung is rushing to launch Galaxy S4," said Sun Changxu, the lead analyst for international Electronic Business, "a GS3/GS4 supplier told me that, in addition to the GS3 screen cracking, there was a bug that was easy to burn the motherboard." "     Yi think:" Flash damage caused crash, black screen, this is not noFor a reason. The usual situation may be the loss of electricity, power loss caused by the chip damage, but can not say that the phone a power off, storage is gone, the chip is damaged so that can not be used. This is actually a flaw in the product design itself, the problem Samsung itself has to admit. "     Yi Analysis, design defects mainly in the motherboard design is unreasonable." Smart Phone Board is responsible for control circuits, chips, power management, and so on, and the general mobile phone is not normal shutdown, just restart can be restored, rather than the black screen "change bricks." "This means that Samsung itself has a problem with the control of the motherboard, the coordination of power supply and flash chip work, and there is a certain probability that this will happen."      Zhangxiaolong The answer to this: "In fact, the ability of ordinary consumers, regardless of how to brush the machine, are not to brush the chip bad, only hardware damage." Synthesize the present some information to look, the periphery guesses should be the motherboard design flaw, and CPU chip, flash memory chip and so on have certain correlation. "     Zhangxiaolong further explained that, in general, if there is similar to the Samsung" font Door "event, according to technical experience, the first thing to be suspected is that the product hardware line is normal, and CPU chips, flash chips, power management chip three closely related, if the design is improper, Bad power management, it is possible to cause flash memory by a large current breakdown-thus basically can be judged as the motherboard circuit design defects.      Dealers, maintenance points, headquarters say different      before the industry to the "consumer report" reporter revealed that in the "Font gate" exposure, Samsung inside actually already default related products have defects, It may even have started the product quality backtracking mechanism, but Samsung remains silent.      Samsung officials said to consumer reports that their products do not have any quality problems, the fault is caused by improper use of users. However, "consumer report" reporters in Samsung officials, distributors, maintenance points and other places to hear the explanations are diverse, contradictory.      May 26, the reporter to customer identity to Guangzhou Broadway, the Pacific computer City, in two Samsung direct shop, four dealers and a chain of mobile phone stores to understand the situation.      One of the two Samsung direct stores said they had never heard of the "Font gate" and stressed that two of the mobile phone has been its best-selling models, while the other sales staff admitted that the two models in the use of the process is indeed easy to appear "font damage", and recognition of quality issues, said that as long as the decision is not man-made, in the warranty period related to quality issues, Samsung's after-sale will be given warranty.    &NBSp; Dealers generally recognize the existence of "font door" phenomenon. Two of them said that "burning the font is actually Samsung's own machine out of the question, and the distributor has nothing to do", and volunteered to add "not only I9300 (Galaxy S III), N7100 (Galaxy Note II) also has the same hidden dangers."      for the warranty issue, one said that the need for after-sales testing to determine whether the damage caused by the user, another simply directly said that the dealer's After-sale repair point to the "font door" damaged parts of the replacement, regardless of whether it is man-made, all charges: "because" "The problem is not man-made" is actually difficult to define, and Samsung two of the machine itself does exist flaws, we charge also understandable, after all, Samsung's own repair service center is such treatment. "     in a chain of mobile phone stores, sales staff said bluntly:" I do not recommend to buy these two models. You go online to find out, ' font gate ' very serious, this belongs to the quality of Samsung, we suggest you consider this brand other models. He said that if the purchase of Samsung mobile phones in the store "font damage" problem, in the warranty period are given a free warranty, but the maintenance period of up to one months.      Samsung Electronics Service Center, located in Guangzhou's best square, confirms the said Samsung Direct store. Staff said that in the service center, as long as the "font" damage will be directly replaced by the motherboard, rather than just replace the chip; Cao Pingping, PR manager of the Mobile Communications Department marketing department,      Samsung (China) Investment Co., Ltd. did not disclose any relevant information. Ms. Chen, who was responsible for the PR affairs of Samsung China, found reporters repeatedly stated that the "Font gate" incident of the two Samsung mobile phones do not have any quality problems, and leading to the "font" problem is mainly due to improper use of users, "is the cause of the software rather than the hardware problem."      Ms. Chen said that after the Samsung After-sale maintenance, after restoring the factory settings to the users, the related problems will not appear again. But this is contrary to what the reporter knew before to change the motherboard maintenance method. The reporter asked her questions, she said she needs to be confirmed to the Samsung sales department, and no follow-up response. (Consumer Report magazine Guanxiaolei)      A variety of devices that use Samsung Exynos4210 and 4412 are found to have kernel code vulnerabilities      We have been surprised by the xda of the Great gods. But this time, a user named Alephzain also claimed that it had found a loophole in a variety of Samsung devices that could access all of the device's physical memory. It's a huge dive.Vulnerabilities, attackers can use malware to clear data or make devices into bricks, but more likely-secretly access data for use.