[Note 7 Questions & Answers] br0adband:
I agree that Samsung would not be doing this at all to any degree whatsoever if there isn't a problem with the Note 7 - regardless of what end users think or hear or read or happen upon on some website or in some video this is a major catastrophe for them. It could have happened to any smartphone manufacturer but in this instance it happened to Samsung.

Now that the OP has made his position clear, here's my rebuttal of sorts:

... that is based on conjecture, personal opinion, and speculation founded only by you. Got it and I speak from experience there because I too made a post recently of a similar nature, hoping to focus on being logical and rational and presenting information but of course I was called out as a troll because of it.

So let's get to it:

1) The CPSC has information reported to them by Samsung - consumers don't typically report problems directly to the CPSC or any other consumer protection service firsthand, they contact the manufacturer. If you read the particular recall notice at the CPSC they even state this in the recall notice itself:

To Samsung, using the general term "overheating" is safer than "catching fire" or "exploding" and yes the terminology matters a great deal. From a technical standpoint, the term "overheating" would encapsulate terms like combust, catch fire, explode, and a few others but, I'm not sure you're going to understand this for a variety of reasons. Basically, you either get it or you don't.

2) Your fuzzy attempts at working out some kind of math there with the 92 (it's 96 reports, not 92, but you apparently missed that as well as some other details). You are making absolute assumptions that are trying to extract accurate info from just a generalized report based on some numbers - just because Samsung sent an email to a website with a given number of incidents with a specific date doesn't mean Samsung is continually sending updates of every new incident that gets reported every time one happens, that's crazy to think they'd do that.

If they released such reports constantly it would only further incite possible panic with regards to the Note 7 and the negative publicity would have been much worse at this point because of the buildup. Their investigation is underway and will continue as long as it takes and when Samsung puts out a press release for public consumption at their official website then that's when we'll have actual facts to work with - one thing I can promise you with absolute certainty: the number of incidents worldwide is well past the 150 unit point and that number is going to continue to grow over the next few weeks.

3) Samsung has publicly stated at their website and through the CPSC that an investigation is underway and will continue till they are satisfied they've discovered the cause, a solution or fix at this point is irrelevant because the Note 7 is dead, period, end of story, it's not coming back, there won't be a v3 nor probably a Note 8 (which was a tablet device released a few years ago) - the Note branding has suffered irreversible damage and it will not be making a return.

Samsung has not publicly stated at their website or anyplace else that I'm aware of (except a few websites and blogs that have "an insider at Samsung..." or something to that effect) that they have not been able to reproduce the conditions that cause the thermal runaway which eventually destroys the device in the manner that it's been happening worldwide which prompted the recall in the first place. If you can show me an actual Samsung press release or a public statement on an official Samsung website then I'd sure like to see it - until such time as they do this whole idea of "I heard Samsung can't repeat it or reproduce it..." is 100% conjecture and speculation and hearsay passed along by a guy that knows a guy that knows another guy...

4) Samsung itself said this in a statement:

You said the first report was September 9th which is utterly false. Samsung received the first report of an incident with a Note 7 on August 24th which is only 5 days after it went on sale on August 19th. From that date to September 1st there were 35 cases reported globally - Samsung admitted as such right there in their own statement quoted above so that means in roughly 8 days (Aug 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, Sept 1) they had 35 cases reported which is quite a bit considering the devices were practically out of the boxes only days old (not that the age of the device matters in this).

If you read that statement from Samsung with a finer and more accurate level of comprehension what it says is this: Samsung had received reports of incidents involving the Note 7 almost from the time of release of the Note 7, not quite day one but five days in is still pretty quick, with 35 reports coming in worldwide after the first report on Aug 24th. They had done a relatively cursory investigation in that week (pretty fast, probably too fast) and came to the conclusion that it was a battery issue.

In less than 2 weeks from the date of release and first retail sales there were 35 reported incidents with the Note 7.

That's all that portion of the statement covers but it continues:

They make it clear they've stopped sales of the Note 7 in South Korea (to carriers and to direct consumers) and they make the offer to replace the devices with a new one (that we now understand had the different battery from the different manufacturer). Because we know they switched battery manufacturers that took a few days to get into action and nothing much else happened for a few days.

Later that same day on Sept 2nd Samsung announced a voluntary global recall of 2.5 million devices for a suspected battery issue - again, their investigation into the matter was pretty quick, probably too quick, and wasn't nearly enough to actually track down what was going wrong. We also know from seeing X-ray images of the original production model SDI manufactured batteries that there was some damage done to those batteries either on the production lines or when the batteries were inserted into the Note 7 devices: the bending plates on the outer edges is plainly visible in the X-ray images and it's not supposed to happen so Samsung quickly concluded that was the most likely cause of the incidents so, they switched to using ATL manufactured batteries in the hopes that would be the solution.

Unfortunately, it wasn't because less than a week later they got a report (probably more, actually) of a replacement Note 7 device incident that had an ATL manufactured battery that was basically the same as the pre-replacement devices with SDI manufactured batteries.

5) With respect to the shipments of Note 7 devices from the factories and whether or not any of them suffered catastrophic failure en route, we simply don't know at this time. Most major shippers like FedEx, UPS, even the US Postal Service don't necessarily tell you every time something goes wrong on a flight - that does nothing but potentially incite panic in the general population with nothing to substantiate the situation at hand.

We have absolutely no idea if any devices that have been shipped back to Samsung have had incidents because of exactly the reasons I just stated: it's not in the purview of the shipping companies or Samsung to notify the public of every single thing that goes wrong from point A to point B with email alerts and notifications along the way. In fact, the sheer confidentiality of such shipping precludes anyone outside of Samsung or the shippers (that includes the customer that sent the device back too) from knowing what's going on.

Does this surprise me or am I the least bit curious about this? Nope, because I already understand why anything that might have happened would have been or was actually reported and it's unlikely that non-used devices would have problems because they haven't been used while they're in transit. Again, you either get it or you don't.

-1) Any hardware manufacturer of any smartphone can make a change in the firmware/software controlling the hardware that will adjust the current charge rate, this is not rocket science - hell I can install a custom kernel on most Android devices that allows me to do this, it's not a big deal

-2) Yeah, and? What, was that supposed to be some earth-shaking monumental discovery? It's basic electrical and electronics theory but here's something you may not actually know: voltage is pushed, current is pulled. Read that again so it sinks in. Voltage is pushed meaning you can force a voltage into a device, too much voltage and you can and will more than likely fry the circuit. With voltage, when a charger is pushing it's literally knocking on the door of the device (figuratively speaking) and saying "Here's 5V, take it all..." and it's like a firehose in some respects.

Usually components are made to about a 10-15% tolerance meaning if you have a device that works on 5V voltage you can use a charger that would push 4.5V (-10%) up to 5.5V (+10%) and the device would almost always be just fine with that, wouldn't even cause any discernible heat issues either. Devices are killed more frequently by chargers that don't regulate themselves to those kind of tolerances and push too much voltage into a device.

But current aka amperage, that's an entirely different beast. With current, it's pulled meaning the device is asking for a certain amount of it based on the design specifications and if the charger supplying the current is working properly it will not provide more than requested. Read that again too because it's the key issue here: as long as the charging circuit is functioning properly it will request a specific amount of current from the charger and if the charger is working correctly it will only provide the exact amount that's being request. This means if the Note 7's charging circuit says "I need 2A (that's 2 Amps or 2000 mA) of current please..." the charger will then provide 2A of current regardless of how much current the charger is capable of.

Get that last point? You sure? I'm not so hopeful. Here's a test:

Say I have a device that has a nearly dead battery with about 5% charge on it and it wants 5V and 2A and I attach a charger that is capable of providing 5V and 10A - note that I said capable of providing 10A. The fact that the battery only has a 5% charge on it is very very important here so don't dismiss this aspect.

Tell me what happens to the device. Go ahead, think about it, I'll wait.

<cue elevator music... oh, cool, Eurythmics... "Sweet dreams are made of this..." "Third floor, ladies lingerie...">

Ok, so tell me what happens to the device now that you've had a second or two to think about it. What happens?

The device pulls 5V and 2A from the charger that is capable of providing 5V and 10A and that's it. The device charges and as the charge capacity in the battery reaches it's design limit the actual charging circuit ramps down the amount of current requested. In fact, the large amount of current is requested early on when the battery is at a low point in terms of charge and then it tapers down as the battery capacity fills with charge. This is another protection method - if you were to keep pulling 2A of current at a 95%+ charge level that would cause the battery cell itself to begin to overheat. That's why when you charge batteries at very low levels you can feel them get really warm at the beginning of the charging cycle - and the charger will be quite warm too - but as they battery fills up not only does the battery begin to cool down but the charger does too.

See how that works? Class dismissed.

Holy hell, you finally got around to saying something that we can both agree on. We don't know exactly what the full cause of these defects might be but we can damned sure say that the final results are absolutely catastrophic.

Of course the situation could have been handled differently, that's something else we can agree on, but we're not Samsung and you like many others are taking this whole thing way too personally - Samsung didn't do this to you, Samsung isn't trying to take your phone away from you in some diabolical conspiracy. They're responsible for taking care of this situation and they're doing it the best way they can given the circumstances. As for the media, they haven't reported on every single instance of failure because not everyone reports everything to the media and Samsung hasn't reported every incident they've received claims about. As I said earlier, I can say without any doubt whatsoever that it's more than 150 cases worldwide, quite a bit more actually but they're not going to release actual report counts, there's no point in it anymore because the worldwide recall is now in effect.

As for Apple, if 100+ reported cases of iPhones catching on fire or exploding worldwide suddenly became the next big thing on the news, I can assure you there would be a recall put into action fast, like iPhone 7 A10 processor fast. ;)

And finally...

Amazing, something else we can agree on but you neglected to mention one rather important aspect:

A Note 7 won't randomly explode next to you just because you decided to ignore the recall - it'll catch fire/combust/explode/etc because it's a known defective device and that's why Samsung is asking people to return the devices in the hopes that the chance of such a thing happening becomes zero.

Have a nice day. ;)

Really? You don't by any chance suppose the fact that people were being physically injured and property was being damaged by the Note 7 devices when they failed had anything to do with it?

Seriously?