You would hope that the manufacturers of the batteries (okay, so the first manufacturer was Samsung too, but in a different business area) would do the damn safety checks during the design phase, and then do enough QA spot checks on what's coming out to stop these issues.
OTOH Samsung probably said 'X mAh in x by y by z size' and they cut corners to meet the contract after some PHB said 'we can do that!'.
On the upside, a lot more is known about compact Li-ion battery manufacture and testing now. In theory, this should make Samsung's devices this year the least likely to have issues.
Shame that I guess those 3 million high-end ARM SoC boards will be disposed of, rather than used in a different device.
Seriously, all the billions of dollars in R&D and manufacturing what is essentially a flawless device that was let down by not one, but two battery manufacturers. Straight up bad luck.
It's plausible the Note 8 won't be radically different from the Note 7. Probably just a faster SoC and modern baseband.
Very interesting to see the extent they went in finding the root fault(s)
I did hear mutterings that they were planning on selling them in Vietnam rather than going to the extraordinary cost of disposing of them all at once in an environmentally sound manner.
Odds are all the Amperex batteries that didn't have the manufacturing defects are safe. The design is fine, but clearly QC was an issue. In other words, a bad batch of batteries. Where as all the SDI batteries have a defect in the case design. Too bad they couldn't find a legitimate battery manufacturer to build a compatible battery in time, such as Sanyo, Panasonic, Sony, etc.
I don't think this is a battery problem. I think the real issue was the testing of the final product. The battery by itself probably worked just fine. Crammed inside Samsung's case, not so much.
Right. And I think if they flipped the battery over the other way around it would have given them more tolerance and then the batteries would have been colder with the logo side facing the back and more heat being conducted away from the battery. I'll let you publish a report on it.
Phone makers don't expect major suppliers to fail. And they certainly won't normally find relatively rare problems with the few hundred field testers normally used.
For example, look at the current iPhone 6S battery replacement program. How could Apple anticipate that some batteries would go into early shutdown mode? Ditto for Samsung.
Of course, after the Note 7 situation, no doubt both companies are building giant test facilities to better look for problems that don't arise until hundreds of thousands of units hit the market.
" don't arise until hundreds of thousands of units hit the market."
wrong approach. Deming, back about 1950, showed the Japanese (because Americans wouldn't listen), that doing it right the first time was more better. after the fact QA/testing costs more, as Samsung has found out. in both cases/suppliers there was a specific manufacturing failure; propelled by Samsung's demand for too thin insulator. both defects can be detected in process, but weren't, likely because "it would cost too much".
This is a very impressive failure analysis and has fully restored my faith in Samsung. Hopefully all other manufacturers will look closely at this study.
I hope this also. There's a lack of appreciation of the sheer amount of energy held within a lithium battery. I calculated that my portable battery pack has 30% of the energy of a hand grenade. Compromising on safety for profit is a serious mistake often made by car manufacturers and covered up (see: airbags that throw shrapnel in your face). I commend the honesty and transparency here - they admitted the problem, attempted to fix it and then at huge cost stopped the whole production line and killed their top end product. Then they spent a fortune on a study to see exactly what went wrong and shared the results with the world so everyone could learn from this incident. All manufactured products will have faults and when you're operating at the edge of the envelope (in this case to maximise energy stored in a small space) then the risk is higher. It's how you deal with it that defines you as a company and I really respect Samsung's approach.
Samsung: But, but, but... BATTERY! Deflection from QA on their part big time. You're right. This will change how things are done. Samsung will survive this. For a company like HTC this would likely kill it.
I'm sure they learned their lesson. They obviously knew what was wrong with the batteries from SDI during the first recall. I just hoped it was handled better during that first recall. Had they delayed the launch a whole month and made more tests to batteries from both suppliers, none of this would have happened, and the best phone of last year would still be in the market.
That being said, I'm also glad that the 3rd parties agree that he Note7's internal design was state of the art, and "exceeded all safety and engineering expectations", debunking all the other theories about the internal design of the phone itself being "rushed" and/or "flawed", or that "Samsung has no idea what happened" BS claims from media outlets (with no exception). Kinda shows the level of "expertise" of these outlets...
Impeccable hardware that just HAD to be "exceptionally better" than the competition, and a huge advertising budget has been the only way to combat such biased, cheap and dishonest media outlets, owned by the same shareholders of competitor companies, and/or heavily influenced... It's going to be an uphill battle from here, but they'll manage, I'm sure, they always did.
Yea I sound like a fanboy, but I believe I need to balance out the unfair treatment they've been getting all over the years.
But it is Samsung's main fault for asking for such a big capacity battery inside a small case like that, they should've done their research at the time instead of trying to cut corners.
Cutting what corners? The Note7 was probably the only non-compromise phone in 2016.
I'm tired if saying this over and over in this small comment section. If you're not going to read the report, at least read my comment properly and the rest of the comments here.
The "case" here is not actually the phone, but the outer shell of the battery. What was wrong was that the shells had rounded corners when the interior was not rounded which curved the insides making them contact. Their assertion is that if it was not rounded, the phone would have been just fine.
App,e did the same thing going to high voltage lipo cells years ago. They either got lucky or went with a reliable manufacturer. It was a mild boost to 3.8-3.9v from 3.7, without increasing the amps. Samsung went the other route and increased amps, which turned out to be a little riskier since that causes a larger battery case.
Why is everyone still parroting this meme that "da battery be 2 big 4 da phone"?
The analysis here presents two things:
1) Nothing is wrong with the phone's electronics by itself and the phone's electronics performed well to control incoming voltage/amperage during charge/discharge cycles.
2) Problems inherent with the battery fires are due to short-circuits of the battery itself, leading to thermal runaway, for two different reasons from two different suppliers.
a) For Samsung SDI, it was persistent damage to the top-right corner of the battery pouch where electrodes in close proximity may short-circuit during thermal expansion/contraction experienced during charge/discharge cycles.
b) For Amperex Tech, it was persistent damage to the positive terminal of the battery pouch, due to spotty welding.
Because battery size and capacity may have a role here, more so for Samsung SDI's battery than for Manufacturer B. If Samsungs requests a certain capacity in a specific volume, battery manufacturers may have to perhaps push design limitations that may results in what we see here in this analysis.
Except, again, battery size wasn't the issue here.
It was electrodes near negative terminal aren't spaced enough to prevent short-circuiting during thermal expansion/contraction, and spotty welding on the positive terminal for the battery.
It should be blatantly obvious from manufacturer B, whose only issue was spotty welding for the positive terminal, that the battery size dimensions and capacity weren't an issue; The batteries by design were flawed and the quality wasn't thoroughly tested by two independent manufacturers.
Meaning, they can get even larger capacity batteries in the phone and it would work out _just_fine_, if they did their due diligence QA on the battery manufacturing process to ensure what was being delivered wasn't faulty.
Again >"muh battery size" has nothing to do with it.
So what are you saying? That the batteries could have been manufactured safely? That's not clear to me from the article. The 'how' is outlined but not really the 'why' -- was the battery design impossible to manufacture safely at scale?
-- Except, again, battery size wasn't the issue here.
read up the NYT piece: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/business/samsun... . "Pushing to make the battery thinner and more powerful, Samsung opted for an exceptionally thin separator in its battery." clearly, Samsung specified the power from the battery and specified the dimensions of the insulating film
Stop parroting BS articles just because they support your hate towards Samsung.
Three independent entities were hired to perform thorough analysis of the situation. When each of their representative took the podium, first thing they stated their names, their educational and expertise levels, and the amount of experience they have in that specific, explicitly related field.
And what do we get from the NYT? A fellow in social studies? lol
You guys are hilarious. It's amazing how far people go in believing and citing clowns just to prove an invalid, prejudice arguments.
reporting information from folks who are too scared to be on the record??? could be that Samsung is in the "alternative facts" universe with The Donald.
It's worth pointing out the NYT has been awarded more Pulitzer's than any other news agency in the world, and is one of the oldest news papers in the United States. They don't just hire amateurs who publish crap without being reviewed, edited and internal,g scrutinized.
The Donald was right about one thing, the NYT is an absolute gem.
The Huffington Post, however, can take its bias, liberal agenda to hell along with Fox News' fair and balanced propaganda machine. Political preferential treatment has no place in the media. I find the Times fairly balanced, as I do most of NPR. It appeared slightly bias this political season because it was so ridiculous, but those two sources did the best at keeping it serious.
But arent all the phone manufacturers doing that? i.e. they have conflicting design goals. Goal 1: make the phone as thin as possible goal 2: Make the other dimensions of the phone as small as possible while accommodating the desired screen size. Goal 3: Achieve the longest battery life possible by cramming the largest capacity battery possible into the space that results from 1 and 2.
A couple of other thoughts: 1. since all manufacturers are doing 1 - 3 above, are they essentially just getting lucky that they haven't had this happen too? 2. Do we need to be worried that other phones that do not have a defect could have a similar problem induced through physical damage due to dropping the phone etc?
Well, sure, that's the industry trend. However, Samsung is a leader and being in that position, innovation and pushing the envelop comes with the territory. They have to have a reason for you to pay that $300-$400 premium over a competitor's phone. There's really an easy test to this hypothesis. We'll need detailed engineering specs on battery size to capacity of the Note 7 and compare it to batteries from other phones. If there's no difference, then it's not a flaw resulting from too much battery in too little space. Then Samsung got really unlucky. That's 2 battery defects from 2 different manufacturers; statistically unlikely.
Or, they could have simply used removable batteries and saved themselves billions :P
That way, you don't have to recall your hilariously expensive phones when you inevitably fail in some way or another in the most dangerous component, the battery.
(removable batteries are also built like tanks, as opposed to the "just barely sufficient" protection that most internal batteries have, and are thus far safer in general)
The same test where having sufficiently futureproof RAM amount for the bloatware that is Android and/or having a Micro SD card slot fails you as well it seems :P.
I agree, my 1st 2 phones had removable batteries that also served as back covers. IMHO The overwhelming majority of users use a case with phones of this class (100% of the people I've seen), so why not make the phone tougher and thicker in the 1st place?
Have to agree. I've got a note 5 and one of the first things I did was put a case on it. So if the back of the phone was ugly, I wouldn't care since I never see it anyway.
I know right! But do you think they will have learned their lesson? I suppose in that they'll make the batteries more safe and get tested more.... But the return of removable batteries? Nah.
"UL also discovered that the separator was too thin in some samples, which would increase the likelihood of this type of failure."
...But-but-but if the phone was an enormously 1mm thicker to accomodate a battery that is a lot more physically fault tolerant how would consumers manage to fit it into their pockets?
But if it was 1 MM thicker, would that additional thickness go to making it safer? Or would the extra space be used to make the battery even bigger? Comparing the specs of my Note 5 to the Note 7: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/137774-samsung-gal... The note 7 is slightly bigger in all dimensions including being .9 MM thicker - just about the "enormous" increase you mention. but the battery on the Note 5 is a 3000 mAH Vs. 3220 in the Note 7.
"...But-but-but if the phone was an enormously 1mm thicker to accomodate a battery that is a lot more physically fault tolerant how would consumers manage to fit it into their pockets?"
so, I guess Mao was right: the West is just a bunch of decadent wimps.
A report by the Wall Street Journal said the problem was "irregularly sized" batteries and EETimes said it was because the batteries were squeezed too tight. It turns out both publications were wrong.
They weren't wrong - it was just a different way of looking at it. The phone design didn't allow sufficient clearance for the batteries to naturally expand and shrink. It's not just the internal design of the batteries at issue, but also the physical size specifications as communicated by Samsung to the battery supplier.
"The phone design didn't allow sufficient clearance for the batteries to naturally expand and shrink" It did. Read the damn report.
"It's not just the internal design of the batteries at issue" It was. Again, read the damn report. The possibility of these batteries catching fire is just as high even if they weren't installed inside a phone. Simply charging and discharging would be enough for them to catch fire.
The ones in my reply? I was quoting the other comment. The rest of the information I'm providing is from the press conference.
@frodesky and all the others are most probably quoting the WSJ and other publications, who published statements "analysts" who were guessing what went wrong after an iFixit teardown.
So many thing you could avoid by simple making a non sealed battery. I think governments should enforce that any smartphone,tablet and laptop should come with replaceable battery.
Because, you know, quite a few Sony laptops with removable batteries caught fire. That's the first spate of li-ion fires I can remember.
Also I'm pretty sure the li-ions in a Boeing 787 can be removed but that didn't stop the first batch from burning... Also a manufacturing defect, iirc, rather than a design fault.
They could have caught this if they had tested them sufficiently, but as in anything, it's too expensive to sacrifice so many phones just for the sake of testing They did it now since they have sufficient reason to figure out root cause AND they happen to have a lot of those recalled inventories to conduct this experiment with. I reckon the failure rate is much less than a hundredth of a percent so they'd have to run the test on maybe 10000 units to get some failures to show, hence that testing setup.Unfortunately for them when you sell millions of units, that means a few hundred people are getting their pants on fire, still a tiny percentage but it's enough to burn the whole company with the outcry.
"I reckon the failure rate is much less than a hundredth of a percent so they'd have to run the test on maybe 10000 units to get some failures to show"
could be worse. could be that electronics manufacturers/vendors are subject to an FDA-type agency that won't let you sell a potentially harmful thingee unless you prove, with data not just theory, that your thingee really, really won't hit that threshold. :)
Its a low failure rate but a (potentially) high impact when failures occur. If it happens in my pants pocket, there is a risk of serious injury. If it happens while driving my car, it could easily cause an accident. On an airplane...obvious potential for serious negative consequences.
Dear Samsung, Just bring back removable batteries! We dont care if the phone is 8.6mm or 7.985mm thick. Phones can be IP68 rated with removable batteries. I was a Note series fan for 3 things - Amoled display, Pen, and (user) removable battery.
Good job AT. I have never seen this kind of info in other sites. Anyway, it was a good call by Samsung, recognizing it is a battery failure. Unfortunately, it was the same for the replacement batteries too. Or is it just, the battery design of the Note 7 is too risky to make such a scenario that two suppliers having the same problem. I think this is just Samsung taking the blame away from themselves while the battery manufacturers has no problem taking the blame.
Two different shops making the battery based on same design with different flaws. It seems like the battery was made with too little tolerance or the design wasn't followed to the tee. Either way some of these QC procedure should help in the future
Just make the phone thicker for better tolerances. First thing I did for my latest phone was slap a Spigen Rugged Armor on it. It adds about 2.8mm to the thickness but it's a fair trade-off for the screen and camera protection. Not everyone wants super slim phones.
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bug77 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Great stuff. Next time do all the above before the release, Samsung.psychobriggsy - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
You would hope that the manufacturers of the batteries (okay, so the first manufacturer was Samsung too, but in a different business area) would do the damn safety checks during the design phase, and then do enough QA spot checks on what's coming out to stop these issues.OTOH Samsung probably said 'X mAh in x by y by z size' and they cut corners to meet the contract after some PHB said 'we can do that!'.
On the upside, a lot more is known about compact Li-ion battery manufacture and testing now. In theory, this should make Samsung's devices this year the least likely to have issues.
Shame that I guess those 3 million high-end ARM SoC boards will be disposed of, rather than used in a different device.
lilmoe - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
The should rebrand the recalled devices as one of their mid-range Galaxy A series and sell them at a discount. I'd definitely get 2.Samus - Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - link
Seriously, all the billions of dollars in R&D and manufacturing what is essentially a flawless device that was let down by not one, but two battery manufacturers. Straight up bad luck.It's plausible the Note 8 won't be radically different from the Note 7. Probably just a faster SoC and modern baseband.
Very interesting to see the extent they went in finding the root fault(s)
philehidiot - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
I did hear mutterings that they were planning on selling them in Vietnam rather than going to the extraordinary cost of disposing of them all at once in an environmentally sound manner.I'd buy one with a safe battery.
Samus - Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - link
Odds are all the Amperex batteries that didn't have the manufacturing defects are safe. The design is fine, but clearly QC was an issue. In other words, a bad batch of batteries. Where as all the SDI batteries have a defect in the case design. Too bad they couldn't find a legitimate battery manufacturer to build a compatible battery in time, such as Sanyo, Panasonic, Sony, etc.bug77 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
I don't think this is a battery problem. I think the real issue was the testing of the final product.The battery by itself probably worked just fine. Crammed inside Samsung's case, not so much.
vortmax2 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
I'm not sure your thoughts outweigh the comprehensive testing Samsung performed.Notmyusualid - Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - link
Consider this a thumbs-up!AnotherGuy - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
lol... u almost sounded funny with that commentgarbagedisposal - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Right. And I think if they flipped the battery over the other way around it would have given them more tolerance and then the batteries would have been colder with the logo side facing the back and more heat being conducted away from the battery. I'll let you publish a report on it.Lolimaster - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
They could've gone to a S7 edge+.kdarling - Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - link
Phone makers don't expect major suppliers to fail. And they certainly won't normally find relatively rare problems with the few hundred field testers normally used.For example, look at the current iPhone 6S battery replacement program. How could Apple anticipate that some batteries would go into early shutdown mode? Ditto for Samsung.
Of course, after the Note 7 situation, no doubt both companies are building giant test facilities to better look for problems that don't arise until hundreds of thousands of units hit the market.
FunBunny2 - Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - link
" don't arise until hundreds of thousands of units hit the market."wrong approach. Deming, back about 1950, showed the Japanese (because Americans wouldn't listen), that doing it right the first time was more better. after the fact QA/testing costs more, as Samsung has found out. in both cases/suppliers there was a specific manufacturing failure; propelled by Samsung's demand for too thin insulator. both defects can be detected in process, but weren't, likely because "it would cost too much".
dragosmp - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
That's a serious analysis. If anything could restore (educated) consumer's confidence, this sort of report has to be it.Cellar Door - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
This is a very impressive failure analysis and has fully restored my faith in Samsung. Hopefully all other manufacturers will look closely at this study.philehidiot - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
I hope this also. There's a lack of appreciation of the sheer amount of energy held within a lithium battery. I calculated that my portable battery pack has 30% of the energy of a hand grenade. Compromising on safety for profit is a serious mistake often made by car manufacturers and covered up (see: airbags that throw shrapnel in your face). I commend the honesty and transparency here - they admitted the problem, attempted to fix it and then at huge cost stopped the whole production line and killed their top end product. Then they spent a fortune on a study to see exactly what went wrong and shared the results with the world so everyone could learn from this incident. All manufactured products will have faults and when you're operating at the edge of the envelope (in this case to maximise energy stored in a small space) then the risk is higher. It's how you deal with it that defines you as a company and I really respect Samsung's approach.Spunjji - Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - link
Compare to Apple's approach to defective products.Step 1: Deny.
Step 2: Begrudgingly admit to part of the problem.
Step 3: Charge the customer to fix it.
stepz - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
On the other hand, it's easy to be transparent if it's not your fault.bigboxes - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
This is nothing more than damage control. Samsung screwed the pooch on this one. Trying desperately to find a silver lining in the whole debacle.Samus - Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - link
However, two things come out of this:Better battery testing going forward.
Industry-wide awareness to take battery safety more seriously.
In both cases, consumers win. I like to thank Samsung for sacrificing billions to make it all possible lol.
bigboxes - Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - link
Samsung: But, but, but... BATTERY! Deflection from QA on their part big time. You're right. This will change how things are done. Samsung will survive this. For a company like HTC this would likely kill it.lilmoe - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
I'm sure they learned their lesson. They obviously knew what was wrong with the batteries from SDI during the first recall. I just hoped it was handled better during that first recall. Had they delayed the launch a whole month and made more tests to batteries from both suppliers, none of this would have happened, and the best phone of last year would still be in the market.That being said, I'm also glad that the 3rd parties agree that he Note7's internal design was state of the art, and "exceeded all safety and engineering expectations", debunking all the other theories about the internal design of the phone itself being "rushed" and/or "flawed", or that "Samsung has no idea what happened" BS claims from media outlets (with no exception). Kinda shows the level of "expertise" of these outlets...
Impeccable hardware that just HAD to be "exceptionally better" than the competition, and a huge advertising budget has been the only way to combat such biased, cheap and dishonest media outlets, owned by the same shareholders of competitor companies, and/or heavily influenced... It's going to be an uphill battle from here, but they'll manage, I'm sure, they always did.
Yea I sound like a fanboy, but I believe I need to balance out the unfair treatment they've been getting all over the years.
vladx - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
But it is Samsung's main fault for asking for such a big capacity battery inside a small case like that, they should've done their research at the time instead of trying to cut corners.lilmoe - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Cutting what corners? The Note7 was probably the only non-compromise phone in 2016.I'm tired if saying this over and over in this small comment section. If you're not going to read the report, at least read my comment properly and the rest of the comments here.
vladx - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
I read and understood it very well, Samsung still asked to cram too much capacity in their too small designed case.invinciblegod - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
The "case" here is not actually the phone, but the outer shell of the battery. What was wrong was that the shells had rounded corners when the interior was not rounded which curved the insides making them contact. Their assertion is that if it was not rounded, the phone would have been just fine.lopri - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Perhaps. But that is not what I think of "cutting corners." Overzealous, maybe.vladx - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Samsung cut corners by not doing a thorough research like they finally did after the issue.lopri - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
And you sir are the type who carries an oxygen tank around because, you know, you cannot thoroughly research air quality wherever you go.Samus - Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - link
App,e did the same thing going to high voltage lipo cells years ago. They either got lucky or went with a reliable manufacturer. It was a mild boost to 3.8-3.9v from 3.7, without increasing the amps. Samsung went the other route and increased amps, which turned out to be a little riskier since that causes a larger battery case.JoeyJoJo123 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Why is everyone still parroting this meme that "da battery be 2 big 4 da phone"?The analysis here presents two things:
1) Nothing is wrong with the phone's electronics by itself and the phone's electronics performed well to control incoming voltage/amperage during charge/discharge cycles.
2) Problems inherent with the battery fires are due to short-circuits of the battery itself, leading to thermal runaway, for two different reasons from two different suppliers.
a) For Samsung SDI, it was persistent damage to the top-right corner of the battery pouch where electrodes in close proximity may short-circuit during thermal expansion/contraction experienced during charge/discharge cycles.
b) For Amperex Tech, it was persistent damage to the positive terminal of the battery pouch, due to spotty welding.
tl;dr
lern2read
linster - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Because battery size and capacity may have a role here, more so for Samsung SDI's battery than for Manufacturer B. If Samsungs requests a certain capacity in a specific volume, battery manufacturers may have to perhaps push design limitations that may results in what we see here in this analysis.vladx - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Exactly, that's what I meant also.JoeyJoJo123 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Except, again, battery size wasn't the issue here.It was electrodes near negative terminal aren't spaced enough to prevent short-circuiting during thermal expansion/contraction, and spotty welding on the positive terminal for the battery.
It should be blatantly obvious from manufacturer B, whose only issue was spotty welding for the positive terminal, that the battery size dimensions and capacity weren't an issue; The batteries by design were flawed and the quality wasn't thoroughly tested by two independent manufacturers.
JoeyJoJo123 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Meaning, they can get even larger capacity batteries in the phone and it would work out _just_fine_, if they did their due diligence QA on the battery manufacturing process to ensure what was being delivered wasn't faulty.Again >"muh battery size" has nothing to do with it.
Meteor2 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
So what are you saying? That the batteries could have been manufactured safely? That's not clear to me from the article. The 'how' is outlined but not really the 'why' -- was the battery design impossible to manufacture safely at scale?FunBunny2 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
-- Except, again, battery size wasn't the issue here.read up the NYT piece: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/business/samsun... . "Pushing to make the battery thinner and more powerful, Samsung opted for an exceptionally thin separator in its battery." clearly, Samsung specified the power from the battery and specified the dimensions of the insulating film
lilmoe - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Stop parroting BS articles just because they support your hate towards Samsung.Three independent entities were hired to perform thorough analysis of the situation. When each of their representative took the podium, first thing they stated their names, their educational and expertise levels, and the amount of experience they have in that specific, explicitly related field.
And what do we get from the NYT? A fellow in social studies? lol
You guys are hilarious. It's amazing how far people go in believing and citing clowns just to prove an invalid, prejudice arguments.
FunBunny2 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
"And what do we get from the NYT? "reporting information from folks who are too scared to be on the record??? could be that Samsung is in the "alternative facts" universe with The Donald.
lilmoe - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
I'm sorry, but you're beyond help...Samus - Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - link
It's worth pointing out the NYT has been awarded more Pulitzer's than any other news agency in the world, and is one of the oldest news papers in the United States. They don't just hire amateurs who publish crap without being reviewed, edited and internal,g scrutinized.The Donald was right about one thing, the NYT is an absolute gem.
The Huffington Post, however, can take its bias, liberal agenda to hell along with Fox News' fair and balanced propaganda machine. Political preferential treatment has no place in the media. I find the Times fairly balanced, as I do most of NPR. It appeared slightly bias this political season because it was so ridiculous, but those two sources did the best at keeping it serious.
Ratman6161 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
But arent all the phone manufacturers doing that? i.e. they have conflicting design goals.Goal 1: make the phone as thin as possible
goal 2: Make the other dimensions of the phone as small as possible while accommodating the desired screen size.
Goal 3: Achieve the longest battery life possible by cramming the largest capacity battery possible into the space that results from 1 and 2.
A couple of other thoughts:
1. since all manufacturers are doing 1 - 3 above, are they essentially just getting lucky that they haven't had this happen too?
2. Do we need to be worried that other phones that do not have a defect could have a similar problem induced through physical damage due to dropping the phone etc?
vladx - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Looks like the other manufacturers didn't push over the current techological limits.linster - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Well, sure, that's the industry trend. However, Samsung is a leader and being in that position, innovation and pushing the envelop comes with the territory. They have to have a reason for you to pay that $300-$400 premium over a competitor's phone. There's really an easy test to this hypothesis. We'll need detailed engineering specs on battery size to capacity of the Note 7 and compare it to batteries from other phones. If there's no difference, then it's not a flaw resulting from too much battery in too little space. Then Samsung got really unlucky. That's 2 battery defects from 2 different manufacturers; statistically unlikely.stepz - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
They didn't just try to cut corners - the issue was literally that corners were getting cut.bigboxes - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Whatever. It's obvious you didn't have a Note 7 go up in flames in your pocket.Communism - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Or, they could have simply used removable batteries and saved themselves billions :PThat way, you don't have to recall your hilariously expensive phones when you inevitably fail in some way or another in the most dangerous component, the battery.
(removable batteries are also built like tanks, as opposed to the "just barely sufficient" protection that most internal batteries have, and are thus far safer in general)
Communism - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
But of course planned obsolescence always overrides all other concerns in these types of matters :P.lilmoe - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Removable batteries don't pass the "PREMIUMMMMMM" test...Communism - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
The same test where having sufficiently futureproof RAM amount for the bloatware that is Android and/or having a Micro SD card slot fails you as well it seems :P.Communism - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
And soon only peasants will have that "unpremium" feature of analog 3.5 mm audio jacklilmoe - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Right. The media nowadays are nothing but marketing enhancers. I mean, even water resistance didn't matter until September last year.drajitshnew - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
I agree, my 1st 2 phones had removable batteries that also served as back covers. IMHO The overwhelming majority of users use a case with phones of this class (100% of the people I've seen), so why not make the phone tougher and thicker in the 1st place?Ratman6161 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Have to agree. I've got a note 5 and one of the first things I did was put a case on it. So if the back of the phone was ugly, I wouldn't care since I never see it anyway.JoeyJoJo123 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
But >muh unibody aluminum case designHow can you have a unibody aluminum case if there's clearly a battery compartment door?!
andrewaggb - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
I know right! But do you think they will have learned their lesson? I suppose in that they'll make the batteries more safe and get tested more.... But the return of removable batteries? Nah.Murloc - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
if it was the battery manufacturer's fault all along, why aren't other phones by samsung catching fire?WPX00 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Because each phone's battery is designed separately and manufcatured differently?FunBunny2 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
-- Because each phone's battery is designed separately and manufcatured differently?phones and the like long ago gave up using standard battery types. I'd wager that no two phones use the same battery.
Fleeb - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Maybe because that particular battery model is specific or tied to the Note 7 model and it is not used in other Samsung phones?Chaitanya - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Thats due to the fact that each device uses its own specific battery. In case of Note7 it was too much capacity for the size.lilmoe - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
No it wasn't. Not in relative terms at least. Did you guys actually read the article, or even watch the press conference?Ratman6161 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Who actually designs the battery? Is it Samsung and the just outsource the actual manufacturing? Or to they just specify the external dimensions?kdarling - Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - link
The phone manufacturer specifies the size they want, and the battery manufacturer designs and builds it.Apple, for example, used to use SDI batteries a few years back.
bleh0 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
If they come back at some point with a Note 8 it might as well have a removable battery.StrangerGuy - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
"UL also discovered that the separator was too thin in some samples, which would increase the likelihood of this type of failure."...But-but-but if the phone was an enormously 1mm thicker to accomodate a battery that is a lot more physically fault tolerant how would consumers manage to fit it into their pockets?
lilmoe - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
They did make the phones thicker in 2016 compared to their 2015 lineup...Ratman6161 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
But if it was 1 MM thicker, would that additional thickness go to making it safer? Or would the extra space be used to make the battery even bigger? Comparing the specs of my Note 5 to the Note 7:http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/137774-samsung-gal...
The note 7 is slightly bigger in all dimensions including being .9 MM thicker - just about the "enormous" increase you mention. but the battery on the Note 5 is a 3000 mAH Vs. 3220 in the Note 7.
FunBunny2 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
"...But-but-but if the phone was an enormously 1mm thicker to accomodate a battery that is a lot more physically fault tolerant how would consumers manage to fit it into their pockets?"so, I guess Mao was right: the West is just a bunch of decadent wimps.
lefty2 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
A report by the Wall Street Journal said the problem was "irregularly sized" batteries and EETimes said it was because the batteries were squeezed too tight. It turns out both publications were wrong.frodesky - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
They weren't wrong - it was just a different way of looking at it. The phone design didn't allow sufficient clearance for the batteries to naturally expand and shrink. It's not just the internal design of the batteries at issue, but also the physical size specifications as communicated by Samsung to the battery supplier.lilmoe - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
"The phone design didn't allow sufficient clearance for the batteries to naturally expand and shrink"It did. Read the damn report.
"It's not just the internal design of the batteries at issue"
It was. Again, read the damn report. The possibility of these batteries catching fire is just as high even if they weren't installed inside a phone. Simply charging and discharging would be enough for them to catch fire.
Matt Humrick - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Are those quotes from the Wall Street Journal?lilmoe - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
The ones in my reply? I was quoting the other comment. The rest of the information I'm providing is from the press conference.@frodesky and all the others are most probably quoting the WSJ and other publications, who published statements "analysts" who were guessing what went wrong after an iFixit teardown.
jamyryals - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
It's pretty amazing this sort of thing doesn't happen more often.Lolimaster - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
So many thing you could avoid by simple making a non sealed battery. I think governments should enforce that any smartphone,tablet and laptop should come with replaceable battery.ph00ny - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Are you saying non-sealed battery won't catch on fire?Meteor2 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
Because, you know, quite a few Sony laptops with removable batteries caught fire. That's the first spate of li-ion fires I can remember.Also I'm pretty sure the li-ions in a Boeing 787 can be removed but that didn't stop the first batch from burning... Also a manufacturing defect, iirc, rather than a design fault.
stepz - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
Or a design fault for not providing enough room for manufacturing variability. Two sides of the same coin.SteelRing - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
clearly more regulations is the answer to all woesSteelRing - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
They could have caught this if they had tested them sufficiently, but as in anything, it's too expensive to sacrifice so many phones just for the sake of testing They did it now since they have sufficient reason to figure out root cause AND they happen to have a lot of those recalled inventories to conduct this experiment with. I reckon the failure rate is much less than a hundredth of a percent so they'd have to run the test on maybe 10000 units to get some failures to show, hence that testing setup.Unfortunately for them when you sell millions of units, that means a few hundred people are getting their pants on fire, still a tiny percentage but it's enough to burn the whole company with the outcry.FunBunny2 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
"I reckon the failure rate is much less than a hundredth of a percent so they'd have to run the test on maybe 10000 units to get some failures to show"could be worse. could be that electronics manufacturers/vendors are subject to an FDA-type agency that won't let you sell a potentially harmful thingee unless you prove, with data not just theory, that your thingee really, really won't hit that threshold. :)
Ratman6161 - Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - link
Its a low failure rate but a (potentially) high impact when failures occur. If it happens in my pants pocket, there is a risk of serious injury. If it happens while driving my car, it could easily cause an accident. On an airplane...obvious potential for serious negative consequences.Hereiam2005 - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
It's time to move on to LiFePO4 tech.zeeBomb - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
I knew it Samsung tried to go all out with overall thinness...This is why we don't need *THINNER* phones!Ratman6161 - Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - link
Note 7 is .9 MM thicker than the Note 5.vikas.sm - Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - link
Dear Samsung, Just bring back removable batteries! We dont care if the phone is 8.6mm or 7.985mm thick. Phones can be IP68 rated with removable batteries. I was a Note series fan for 3 things - Amoled display, Pen, and (user) removable battery.zodiacfml - Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - link
Good job AT. I have never seen this kind of info in other sites.Anyway, it was a good call by Samsung, recognizing it is a battery failure. Unfortunately, it was the same for the replacement batteries too.
Or is it just, the battery design of the Note 7 is too risky to make such a scenario that two suppliers having the same problem. I think this is just Samsung taking the blame away from themselves while the battery manufacturers has no problem taking the blame.
ph00ny - Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - link
Two different shops making the battery based on same design with different flaws. It seems like the battery was made with too little tolerance or the design wasn't followed to the tee. Either way some of these QC procedure should help in the futureKoenig168 - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
Just make the phone thicker for better tolerances. First thing I did for my latest phone was slap a Spigen Rugged Armor on it. It adds about 2.8mm to the thickness but it's a fair trade-off for the screen and camera protection. Not everyone wants super slim phones.