{"id":29511,"date":"2017-05-26T00:00:30","date_gmt":"2017-05-26T07:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.technightowl.com\/?p=29511"},"modified":"2017-05-25T20:12:18","modified_gmt":"2017-05-26T03:12:18","slug":"more-problems-for-samsung","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technightowl.live\/blog\/2017\/05\/more-problems-for-samsung\/","title":{"rendered":"More Problems for Samsung"},"content":{"rendered":"

I rather expect this column won’t get near the attention if would receive had I titled it, “More Problems for Apple.” But a lot of that is just fake news, and I’m not interested. I strive to make genuine criticisms of Apple, and there are plenty of things to talk about.<\/p>\n

This time, however, Samsung has a lot of explaining to do \u2014 once again.<\/p>\n

First, there are those flawed security systems for the Galaxy S8 smartphone. It has three different biometric schemes\u00a0to secure the handset, which is supposed to be a good thing. But that’s true only if they work properly.<\/p>\n

So before the Galaxy S8 even went on sale, legitimate questions were raised about the placement of its fingerprint sensor, in the rear. It was so easy to accidentally touch the camera lens instead, you might\u00a0want to have a tissue handy in case you want to clean it. I’m not at all sure how robust it is, but I’ll assume it otherwise functions properly.<\/p>\n

There are two other security sensors, and there appear to\u00a0be serious flaws with both.\u00a0During the Galaxy S8 launch event, for example, someone was able to defeat facial recognition with a photo of the user’s face. Does anyone watch TV? Surely the people at Samsung understand the tricks law enforcement people and spies use to break into a locked device.<\/p>\n

So much for facial recognition.<\/p>\n

What’s left is the iris scanner, which had some known limitations. So it is less accurate in bright sunlight, or when it’s dark. Traditionally iris recognition is also less accurate for someone who wears glasses; I’m not sure about contact lenses.<\/p>\n

Worse, it’s\u00a0clearly worthless\u00a0even under the best conditions. According to published reports, some hackers who work with Europe’s\u00a0Chaos Computer Club managed to make easy work of defeating the Galaxy S8’s iris recognition feature. They used a digital camera, a Samsung color laser printer (to add insult to injury) and a contact lens. The process involved taking a picture of the user’s face, making a printout of it, and placing the contact lens over the iris shown in the photo.<\/p>\n

Hold the picture and attached contact lens before the Galaxy S8, and it unlocks. Just like that!<\/p>\n

It’s corporate spin time, and both\u00a0Samsung and Princeton Identity, who builds the iris sensor, claim the feature provides “airtight security.” But not if you can unlock the phone with a photo and a contact lens evidently. I won’t bother with the rest of the statement, since these uncomfortable facts speak for themselves.<\/p>\n

Let’s add this up now. The fingerprint sensor is awkward to use, the facial recognition feature and the iris recognition features are easily defeated with user photos, so what’s left? A passcode I suppose. To make matters worse, the techniques used to hack the Galaxy S8\u00a0don’t seem terribly difficult to do. Didn’t Samsung perform any testing to make sure the security features\u00a0were \u2014 well \u2014 secure? Maybe the Q&A testing is being done by the same people who tested the batteries on the Galaxy Note 7.<\/p>\n

Speaking of batteries, I’m beginning to wonder whether Samsung smartphones should be declared as dangerous to your health. There’s a published report over at AppleInsider from Daniel Eran Dilger<\/a> that tells of a series of lawsuits against Samsung that claim battery failures, overheating and fires on\u00a0a series of flagship smartphones, including the Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge+, S6 Active, S7, S7 Edge, S7 Active and Note 5. There was no Note 6.<\/p>\n

So far it appears that only\u00a0a small number of lawsuits have been filed, so it’s not at all certain if these episodes are outliers, or indicate a trend. Obviously, it hasn’t been enough to convince the authorities in Washington, D.C. to order a recall. It’s also true that there is a small percentage of failures among all mobile gear equipped with lithium-ion batteries. But these lawsuits center on flagship \u2014 and thus the most expensive \u2014 Samsung smartphones. The problems run the usual range of overheating, smoking, and bursting into flame.<\/p>\n

So did Samsung fix the Note 7 problem? Are later products safe?\u00a0That’s not at all\u00a0certain. Evidently there are also reports of battery overheating issues with the Galaxy S8. Again, it doesn’t seem as if there are enough to warrant special attention, and a fair amount of product is out there. According to Samsung, five million were sold during\u00a0the first month. That’s supposed to be a good thing, although Apple manages to move far more iPhones\u00a0in a launch single weekend.<\/p>\n

And one more thing: It appears that the Galaxy S8’s highly-acclaimed AMOLED display has a flaw, involving a red tint\u00a0that’s been observed on some units. The fix evidently requires some sort of self-calibration procedure\u00a0to adjust\u00a0the color balance. But\u00a0Samsung is not admitting that there’s a quality control problem, even though requiring customers to manually adjust their displays seems a little much, don’t you think?<\/p>\n

This is not a matter of someone favoring Android or iOS. It’s a matter of shipping products with serious defects. Samsung doesn’t seem to care, but I hope customers will care enough to choose a different brand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I rather expect this column won’t get near the attention if would receive had I titled it, “More Problems for Apple.” But a lot of that is just fake news, and I’m not interested. I strive to make genuine criticisms of Apple, and there are plenty of things to talk about. This time, however, Samsung […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14136,9351,202,6999,16356,16355,8710,15726,14248,16358,16277,12291,16354,16364,16235,16357,16360,16359,16361,16363,16362,11231],"class_list":["post-29511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-amoled","tag-android","tag-apple","tag-appleinsider","tag-biometrics","tag-chaos-computer-club","tag-daniel-eran-dilger","tag-facial-recognition","tag-fingerprint-sensor","tag-galaxy-note-7-samsung","tag-galaxy-s8","tag-ios","tag-iris-sensor","tag-note-5","tag-note-7","tag-princeton-identity","tag-s6-active","tag-s6-edge","tag-s7","tag-s7-active","tag-s7-edge","tag-samsung"],"yoast_head":"\nMore Problems for Samsung - Gene Steinberg's Tech Night Owl<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.technightowl.live\/blog\/2017\/05\/more-problems-for-samsung\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"More Problems for Samsung - Gene Steinberg's Tech Night Owl\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I rather expect this column won’t get near the attention if would receive had I titled it, “More Problems for Apple.” But a lot of that is just fake news, and I’m not interested. 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