Samsung have finally announced the answers to what caused the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones to explode.
Battery Issue
Samsung have discovered, after a lengthy investigation, that two battery manufacturing issues caused the Galaxy Note 7 to burst into flames. The first issue was that the physical battery size was too small in one corner which caused negative electrodues to be bent and therefore making it more likely that it will short circuit.
The second issue was that the battery providers, Amperex Technology Ltd, had welded the batteries wrongly – therefore points on the batteries could penetrate protective insulation.
Sincere Apology
Before Samsung announced the findings of their investigation President of Samsung Mobile, DJ Koh, said he wanted to ‘deeply apologize’ for the incident.
Samsung also said “Samsung's investigation, as well as the investigations completed by three independent industry organisations, concluded that the batteries were the cause of the Galaxy Note7 incidents.”
Reaction to reported phone ‘explosions’
The first reports of phone batteries exploding were in September – days before the UK release. Samsung initially said this was caused by an “isolated battery cell issue” that only affected a very small percentage of phones sold. However, after more and more reports of phones going up in flames, Samsung decided to recall 2.5 million devices to put an end to this disaster.
It was assumed that the recall had prevented any more reports of flaming phones, but smoke was reported as coming from one of the phones on a US plane, two weeks after the recall. So Samsung addressed this by finally stopping production of these phones – permanently.
They have urged all owners of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones to return them immediately.
Further Reading
For more information, please visit: https://news.samsung.com/global/infographic-galaxy-note7-what-we-discovered