Samsung To Reveal This Month What Caused the Galaxy Note 7 Smartphone To Catch Fire - Report (reuters.com)

One of the biggest mysteries of 2016 will come to an end sometime this month. Samsung will make public the results of its months-long investigation into what caused several Galaxy Note 7 smartphones to turn into flames later this month, according to a report on Reuters. From the report: The South Korean firm said in October it was examining all aspects of the phone, suggesting there may be a combination of factors that contributed to one of the costliest product safety failures in tech history. Samsung has also previously noted that it was working with several third-party sources and experts to figure out what could have caused the error. A popular theory among many is that Samsung attempted to further slim the form factor of the Galaxy Note 7, which resulted in the battery to be held too tightly within the device -- which in turn, caused the layers of lithium cobalt oxide and graphite to touch.

Comments

O-rings

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not convinced they actually know what caused it, nor that they're capable of understanding it. After all, they already claimed to have solved it once, but their understanding proved faulty. What's certain is that the public and the authorities need a good plausible explanation (whether true or not) so they can feel safe and begin to trust Samsung again.

Re:This month?

[TomR teh Pirate]

The OP's comment was mean to be taken as funny, and it was. Your solution to put it in quotes is helpful, but then it suggests somebody at Samsung made an explicit statement matching what you put in quotes. Ironic that you should then indict the American educational system given your solution is a little bit sloppy. A better title might have read, 'Samsung to reveal this month the cause of Galaxy Note 7 fires"

They Don't Know?

[BoRegardless]

If Samsung didn't know from their internal engineers within 2 weeks of the problem, they have a shitty engineering/QC organization.

Re:They Don't Know?

[Mashiki]

Funny story. A company I used to work for back ~10 years ago, had multiple failures across machines(heavy industry) where the PLC would wipe. Wasn't caught in engineering, wasn't caught in QC. The problem went on for months, the only solution in the short term was to send out new eeprom modules when it happened(expedited overnight). The problem ended up being a design/part issue, where in certain power-down cycles, the primary relay would backfeed. Ended up having to dump the company that made the relays and go to another brand. This only happened on 600V-3ph machines, didn't happen on anything using 208V, 360V or 480V.

HCF Error?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Samsung has also previously noted that it was working with several third-party sources and experts to figure out what could have caused the error"

Overheating and bursting into flames is hardly an "error."

Re:I don't understand

[hey!]

Well, let's separate out utility value from design value. A thinner phone is somewhat more convenient all things being equal, but thing's aren't equal. We're obviously at the point where many consumers would prefer a marginal improvement in robustness over a marginal reduction in thinness.

But you've got to get people to buy the thing, and part of that is to make them say, "Wow this is new," when they hold the device. It doesn't take a lot of creativity to make them say that by making the phone thinner than the one they currently carry. You must make it thinner than the last generation of phones. So the usefulness of more thinness isn't for the user, it's for the salesman.