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

Re:This month?

[drinkypoo]

Did someone set us up the bomb?

That's a common misconception, but what happen is someone set up us the bomb.

My guess

[elrous0]

An unexpected surplus of oxidation.

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?

[thegarbz]

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

If you rush to do a RCFA on a failure that caused this kind of loss to a business then you have a very shitty engineering / QC organisation.

Engineers love jumping to conclusions. It's amazing the number of times they get it wrong, don't find the true underlying cause, or don't find very valuable leanings in the process. The fact that they haven't answered this question yet shows they have a far more serious engineering / QC organisation than you will ever know.

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:This month?

[tsqr]

No need to get nasty; the original headline was poorly phrased. This is a pretty common problem with headlines. For example, "17 Remain Dead in Morgue Shooting Spree", and "Dead Body Found in Cemetary", and "One-armed Man Applauds Kindness of Strangers".

This is the proper way to fix the original headline: Samsung To Reveal This Month What Caused the Galaxy Note 7 To Catch Fire

I don't understand

[nospam007]

What's up with this 'thinner' obsession?

Everybody I know uses either a fat battery-cover to have more power or an armored cover to protect the slim phones.
And as for tablets, I prefer the fat toddler-covers which allow a much more relaxed grip on these ultra-thin tablets.

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.

Re:I don't understand

[iTrawl]

The thinner the device in the chunky case the thinner the whole assembly is too. Imagine attaching those protective cases to brick-like phones. Not the same, is it? In the past the brick was the phone. Now the brick is made up of all that padding you attach to it to keep it safe. If they can make some progress regarding the padding, to make it thinner yet as efficient, then you get some sweet pocket padding device.

Re:I don't understand

[ColdWetDog]

All things being equal, thinner isn't better (on electronics, lets make sure we're all on the same page here). As nospam points out, the new iPads are so frigging thin and slippery that they are hard to hold. They look nice just siting there but they're a PITA to use. Maybe they really are like people. Although it's nice to think of them naked, the real world goes a lot more smoothly if they are covered with something.

Somebody really has issues and it ain't us.

Re:I don't understand

[Gravis Zero]

What's up with this 'thinner' obsession?

one year at CES, there was an angry gypsy that whispered "thinner" into the microphone and all our electronics have been suffering ever since. ;)

Re:I don't understand

[Grishnakh]

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.

"Many consumers" does not equal "Apple customers". That, right there, is the fundamental problem. Apple customers want thinness at all costs. And so many companies, like Samsung, are sooo jealous and envious of Apple's cultist customer base that they somehow think that they can replicate this level of success by copying Apple's impractical and user-hostile design decisions.

I'm still hoping these companies will eventually get a clue and stop chasing Apple and their idiotic customers, and concentrate on making solid, reliable, practical products for the rest of us.

Re:I don't understand

[dgatwood]

A thinner phone is somewhat more convenient all things being equal ...

Actually, no. The most convenient design is the one that doesn't slip out of your hands easily and break. Excessive thinness is actually a big contributing factor to the use of cases. The thinner the phones have gotten, the more people have used cases. I used my original iPhone without a case for much of its life and never came close to dropping it. I tried to use my iPhone 5 without a case after the holster broke, and I nearly dropped it three times in the first day.

This is not to say that there aren't other designs that would be equally good without adding as much thickness (e.g. a phone with an elastic band or velcro hand strap on the back), but all things being equal, phones become harder to use when the thickness drops much below about half an inch of grip surface. They become harder to carry, however. So it is a tradeoff, and you have to find a balance between convenience for people who actually use the device and convenience for people who merely carry it around as a fashion statement....

Good to note.. heh

[XSportSeeker]

"A popular theory among many is that Samsung attempted to further slim the form factor of the Galaxy Note 7"

This popular theory came from a private company that disassembled a single unit and came up with the speculation just to promote their own company, yet it has been spread by the tech press irresponsibly as a specialist opinnion.

Though the theory is plausible, it has no substance. So it' s a good thing that an official statement will be coming out soon.

Re:This month?

[BarbaraHudson]

Thanks. The Russians must have hacked my reply. Same as they hacked the power station that it turns out they didn't really hack. :-) Finding some malware on a laptop that wasn't even connected to the grid is hardly grounds for screaming "the power grid has been hacked." Otherwise, every single utility, every single business, etc., has been hacked by the Russians because there's malware on laptops everywhere. Russian. Chinese. North Korean. American.

it's a phone! a mini-tablet! survival lighter!

[swschrad]

only problem is, they didn't put the "light forest on fire as signal" command in the manual. next time....

update

[slashmydots]

I heard they're going to throw a Note 7 and a Takata airbag into the large hadron collider to see if they form a black hole of crappy Asian engineering standards that sucks in all the money around it.

Re:update

[thegarbz]

crappy Asian engineering standards

By all means why don't you come up with some better engineering at that price point. But hey it's easier to simply sit on a forum and shit on another company who are engineering frigging miracles in miniaturisation.

I wonder if they'll reveal why a glass back?

[filesiteguy]

My son bought himself one of these. Nice UI for an Android device, it wasn't the TouchWiz. My fears of a glass back came true, when he was switching from a case and dropped it two feet onto his desk. The entire back was shattered.

Fortunately, the phone was already recalled. Who's stupid enough to make a handheld computer with a glass back?

https://twitter.com/PerfectReign/status/778987256652587008

Re:I wonder if they'll reveal why a glass back?

[Dutch Gun]

My understanding is that the glass back helps to improve radio reception. It's apparently a significant problem for the newer all-aluminum phone designs. The aluminum blocks reception, and there are various ways of coping with it, typically by compromising the solid aluminum back with other materials.