The local news outlets are having a field day covering the Samsung (out-of-warranty) “battery swelling” issue today. A quick search of 삼성 갤럭시 노트 배터리 (Samsung Galaxy Note battery) yields a ton of news stories. This is the third Samsung phone affected by battery swelling. Today, the Korean Consumer Agency announced that Samsung will replace Galaxy Note mobile phone batteries, free of charge. While the Note phones were made in 2011 and are now out of warranty, there’s no reason for a battery to fail so quickly- unless it has a quality defect. (Note: I still have a working iPad 1 and iPhone 3GS with good battery life more than four years after they launched.) They’ve pushed Samsung into admitting that the swelling of lithium-ion batteries in phones is not normal. Samsung Service had previously deceived people into think that this was a “natural phenomenon” of normal lithium-ion phone batteries nearing the end of their life cycle. They can’t use that excuse anymore. Continue reading
The top two requests from our survey were:
1. List of all ETLK articles for easy searching.
2. Previews of all ETLK articles for easy searching.
Two permanent pages have been added to the Menu Bar: List and Previews. These two pages will automatically update to include all future posts.
I will continue to iron out these features over the next few weeks. Please give us time to go back and add older articles too (that will take a huge amount of time). All of these features work on mobile devices and you can still use the Main page’s live search to narrow down the search with keywords.
Starbucks Reserve, the chain’s premium cafe, is set to enter the Korean market. A branch will open in (Seoul) Gangnam District’s trendy Apgujeong neighborhood. A coffee explosion has taken place over the last 5 years and chains are exploring ways to differentiate themselves. Single-origin coffee beans and drip-coffee are the new specialties.
Other chains, such as Tom N Toms and Hollys Coffee, are following suit with single-origin coffee beans and boutique type cafes. Cafes provides an excellent social experience and that may be the key to what makes them so popular here.
Korea’s first Bitcoin ATM went online at Coffee Sedona in the COEX complex in Seoul yesterday. The ATM machine exchanges Korean Won for Bitcoins and visa versa. The Bitcoin ATM does not require photo ID or biometric data to make transactions. Continue reading
This article is part of a series written by a Korean Oriental medicine doctor in the Korea Times. He provides a good overview of Chinese/Korean-style medicine and dismisses some of the myths about it.
And here’s all of our articles on Korean-style Oriental Medicine.
