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Samsung Note 7 Investigation Will Blame 'Irregularly Sized' Batteries and Manufacturing Flaws, Says WSJ (theverge.com)
Samsung's official investigation into the cause of widespread faults with the Galaxy Note 7 will blame "irregularly sized" batteries and manufacturing faults, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The company is set to announce the results of its inquiry this weekend, but the WSJ claims to have revealed its conclusions early, citing information from "people familiar with the matter." From the report: The WSJ says Samsung hired three independent "quality-control and supply-chain analysis firms" to conduct its investigation, with these firms concluding that two separate faults affected the Note 7. The first fault relates to devices that used batteries made by Samsung subsidiary Samsung SDI. These batteries didn't fit inside the phone properly, which led to overheating and, in some cases, explosions. When reports of the Note 7 fault first emerged last August, executives initially believed the problem was confined to these particular devices. In response, they increased production of the Note 7 using batteries made by Hong Kong-based firm Amperex Technology. According to the official investigation, this rush to ensure there was an adequate supply of Note 7 devices for the market led to the second fault -- with the increased pressure on production creating unknown "manufacturing issues."
I work in print
Certain professions (architects and some flavors of engineer) have a bad habit of giving very very specific dimensions, like to within 10um over ~1m which promptly get ignored. Not only are they unimportant and unatainable, but the substrates themselves aren't anything like that dimensionaly stable. Sometimes when I point this out to them they get a little bit upset, and give the impression that they feel I am some sort of slap-dash cowboy who couldn't give a fuck about their requirements.
Now my understanding of prismatic lithium cells is that they are made my laminating foil and plastic together, and then rolling it up into a battery, I'd guess that this is quite a repeatable process but not uber-precise when it comes to finished size. Combine this with the electrodes tendency to expand and contract with charge / discharge cycle then all you need is one over optimistic design engineer to spell disaster.
How much thickness do you think the extra outer layer of plastic adds to the phone? If it has to be more than a millimeter I would be surprised.
Personally, I think it has more to do with the fact the lithium ion batteries have a finite shelf-life than it does with thickness. That means in two years you need a new phone even if you never added any software to it and managed the battery recharging perfectly. Even if the phone had been sitting in a box all that time it'd have significantly less battery life.
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I actually started going out of my way to ask around among people that I run into (at meetings, conferences, etc) whether they want slimmer phones. Even the markedroids didn't give a shit.
Who the hell wants those phones thinner? Nobody I know cares. Yes, we don't want the inch-thick bricks from the 1990, no doubt about this, but phones have been "thin enough" for well over 5 years now.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
For the battery to be truly removable and replaceable it would either need to be significantly larger not because of the battery but because there needs to be a frame rigid enough to accept the battery. When the battery is built in this is no longer a consideration. The only other option is to make the battery replacement part a component of the phone frame which is likely to mean only official batteries can be used and they will be expensive.
As for a recall-and-fix being less expensive - HAHA. It is way easier to just make new phones. #1 collection, shipping, and ensuring the *same* phone makes it back to the customer would be a costly nightmare in and of itself. You would need to start what amounts to an entire logistics company just to complete the process. Then you have to send all the phones to a facility that can make this repair on millions of phones with little time to train employees. You basically still have the labor cost and battery materials cost. Remember Samsung doesn't pay what you do for the parts so they are not losing $600 per phone. They may even be able to negotiate down some of the costs that are "licensing" based in a situation like this and "transfer" that licensing to the replacement phone. The actual "materials" cost of a phone is fairly small. Tons of the cost is IP + there is gross margin.
The ability to take advantage of bulk services from labor to facility time to shipping is reduced which increases costs significantly compared to the fine tuned "new build" production runs. For phones you can fill an airplane with a batch of complete phones - one flight from china and bam - done. For a recall process you are at the whim of the consumer. Daily -1/10th full planes? Market rate shipping?