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."

Comments

An anecdote

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Agrument in favor of modularity

[hey!]

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.

Would the trendy customer please stand up?

[Opportunist]

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.