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Engineers Explain Why the Galaxy Note 7 Caught Fire (digitaltrends.com)
Engineers with manufacturing technology company Instrumental tore apart a Galaxy Note 7 to try and figure out what may have caused some devices to overheat and explode, causing Samsung to recall and eventually cancel all Galaxy Note 7 devices. In their damning new report, the engineers discovered the root of the problem appears to be that the battery is too tightly packed inside the body of the Note 7. Digital Trends reports: They discovered the battery was so tightly packed inside the Galaxy Note 7's body that any pressure from battery expansion, or stress on the body itself, may squeeze together layers inside the battery that are never supposed to touch -- with explosive results. Batteries swell up under normal use, and we place stress on a phone's body by putting it our pocket and sitting down, or if it's dropped. Tolerances for battery expansion are built into a smartphone during design, and Instrumental notes Samsung used "a super-aggressive manufacturing process to maximize capacity." In other words, the Galaxy Note 7 was designed to be as thin and sleek as possible, while containing the maximum battery capacity for long use, thereby better competing against rival devices such as the iPhone 7 Plus and improving on previous Note models. The report speculates that any pressure placed on the battery in its confined space may have squeezed together positive and negative layers inside the cell itself, which were thinner than usual in the Note 7's battery already, causing them to touch, heat up, and eventually in some cases, catch fire. Delving deeper into the design, the engineers say the space above a battery inside a device needs a "ceiling" that equates to approximately 10 percent of the overall thickness. The Galaxy Note 7 should have had a 0.5mm ceiling; it had none.
This is bad. Very bad. If substantiated, the lawsuits against Samsung are going to be epic.
1. Design ultra-thin phone
2. Disregard warnings from engineers
3. Profits!
Correction, I meant "physical engineer". But if you were a psychical engineer, you'd know that already.
Table-ized A.I.
>"...what may have caused some devices to overheat and explode,..."
To my knowledge, NONE of them "exploded". Those that had actual problems had overheating which led to a fire. That is not an "explosion". That word was used by the media to stir up tons of inaccurate hype.
>"...causing them to touch, heat up, and eventually in some cases, catch fire."
Exactly.
What about stop making stuff super thin?
Hopefully this provides some motivation to stop equating thin with better.
Nah, who am I kidding, people are stupid.
Not just minimum. Below minimum or none at all.
Intolerant tolerances will not be tolerated!
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
If they found the problem, it means that they can reproduce it. They were entirely unable to make their test unit fail due to the tight fit, nor were they able to observe that an increase in pressure of a phone in the off condition (under which at least one of the fires occurred in the v2 Note 7) *led to* a runaway thermal condition.
They're basically just speculating because they are looking for some clicks. This is about as conclusive proof as Trump has of 3 million illegals voting in California.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Software "engineers" at best.
This is the company in question. https://www.instrumental.ai/te...
It's a small startup of 9 people with no history. None of the people are even listed as mechanical engineers. They're all software engineers (which isn't a recognized profession, by the way) and business people. Not a one among them has the authority to make any claims about the Note 7. None of them have the actual experience with the Note 7 to do so either - they had a single sample that they couldn't actually do anything with other than write the blog post and fish it out to tech sites for hits and to get their name out there.
I don't understand the obsession with thinness.
Ever since my phone was less than 4cm thick I have been quite happy. What is this need to keeping shaving millimeters off?
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
Double or triple pane windows usually have argon as the fill gas as both its higher molar mass and smaller molecular size than the diatomic major molecules in air increase its insulation ability because of reduced thermal conductivity. It's also naturally water free if provided from liquid argon which is generally available. FYI, the thermal conductivity of a gas is proportional to the square root of molar mass and inversely proportional to the square of the molecule's diameter. At least that's true for real gases at atmospheric pressure which behave nearly like ideal gases
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Phones have been sleek and stylish for years already.
Fashion isn't logical.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
On the other hand, you have EEs like me.
Engineering runs a spectrum. From near cookbook, long practiced, design processes owned by PEs to prototypes hacked up with three opamps, a FPGA, a breadboard and a coat hanger.
Design of consumer product batteries is 'near cookbook long practiced'.
Even I could do it. Samsung wouldn't have given me the authority to tell the PHB they _needed_ volume Y for X mWh. I guarantee there was an Engineer or ten that knew this was a bad idea, but couldn't penetrate the layers of management between him and the person dictating required features.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It is, but not logical in that way. Fashion demonstrates that you can do something other people can't - whether it's spend more money, wear something that is inconvenient because you don't have to work, etc. What it's definitely not is about "getting something done efficiently". Quite the contrary, and hence the assumption of a lack of logic.