Samsung Answers Burning Note 7 Questions, Vows Better Batteries (cnet.com)

From a report on CNET: During a press conference Sunday, Samsung said two separate battery defects caused both the original batch of Galaxy Note 7 phones and the replacement units to overheat. The first battery, it said, suffered from a design flaw. The battery's external casing was too small for the components inside, causing it to short-circuit and ignite. The second battery, which came from another supplier, didn't have the same flaw, Justin Denison, head of product strategy and marketing for Samsung's US arm, said in an interview ahead of the press conference. In the rush to pump out enough batteries for the replacement units, though, the supplier introduced a manufacturing defect that led to the same result, he said. The explanation puts to rest the mystery behind the exploding Note 7, but it kicks off a new challenge for the embattled company: winning back your trust after a disastrous several months that included two recalls and the decision to kill the critically acclaimed phone. The Sunday press conference marked the start of a Samsung campaign to rebuild company credibility, which will include the upcoming launch of the flagship Galaxy S8 phone, as well as another Note later in the year.

Comments

Just the Battery?

[amiga3D]

So the problem was only the battery? That means all they needed to do was make a decent battery for it and it would have been good to go. I'm kind of surprised they couldn't have fixed the problem with a recall unless it was cheaper just to trash the entire system. I think that says a lot about the entire phone business. One component and the entire Note 7 was dead. A component I swap in and out of my S5 routinely.

Re:Just the Battery?

[Junta]

They just didn't have time to definitively figure out root cause and the most obvious culprit being the battery got derailed because it happened with a different battery vendor and design. It ultimately turned out to be battery issues after all, but at the time they couldn't afford to take any chances.

Note the same thing would have happened even with replaceable batteries, though I would like to see replaceable batteries in phones for other reasons.

It wasn't the battery's fault the space

[H3lldr0p]

it was supposed to be slotted into was too small.

It wasn't a engineering problem that was at fault, it was an aesthetic one. Trying to make things too thin and too fragile all in the name of keeping up with Apple. Samsung over-engineered the housing where any imperfection in the battery used could cause trouble. And imperfections did cause trouble. Imperfections, if reports are to be believed, that should have been well tolerated.

So maybe it's time to back off the thinness race and, you know, work on creating a unique look and feel.

Of course...

[fyngyrz]

Of course, if they hadn't been so greedy and stupid as to design a non-user-replaceable battery into the phone, they would have been able to simply send out a relatively low-cost component to the afflicted users, instead of incurring a 5.3 billion dollar loss and severely inconveniencing every one of their note 7 customers (at the very least.)

It was their insistence on screwing the customer with planned obsolescence that bit them. They deserved to be bitten.

As does any company that designs in a non-replaceable, limited-lifetime component — much less one that is non-replaceable, limited-lifetime, and potentially dangerous.

Re:Of course...

[torkus]

While I do appreciate a user-replaceable battery, I certainly don't agree that a non-replaceable battery is purely, if even mostly a greed decision.

First and foremost, design challenges. It's much more difficult to design a phone (especially a larger one) that's rigid enough to survive normal use while not being able to count on the back for structural support. Furthermore, you need to dedicate interior space to the closing/locking/waterproofing mechanisms. Same goes for spring-loaded battery contacts and some minor sort of retaining mechanism. The choice of materials for the back is also limited. You effectively can't do a glass-back anymore (which is great for rigidity).

Then, you need to protect the rest of the interior for when the battery is swapped. This takes up further space, and forces certain layout changes.

And finally, you introduce an additional problem - 3rd party batteries. Bad quality, defective, dangerous 3rd party batteries. People want a spare battery so badly...but often are disinterested in paying the ~$50+ for one when there are ones for $10 in amazon/ebay advertizing "exact match, same as OEM" nonsense. While some might tack a greed charge on this, it's actually a revenue option for the manufacturer. They'd sell quite a few batteries too.

And finally, you CAN still replace the battery down the road when it eventually loses capacity. Granted it requires much more work, but absolute worst case I can imagine involves replacing the battery yearly.

So no, Samsung wasn't greedy by making the battery non-replaceable. They were stupid that they rushed a(n otherwise awesome) product to beat Apple to market (there's some greed if anything) which had an inherent design flaw (twice) and resulted in a huge cost to them and inconvenience to consumers.

Re:Bullshit

[NatasRevol]

At some point, you have to ask: Is Samsung just this unlucky or is there something inherent in their supply chain/processes that caused *multiple* vendors to have issues?

GD+T matters

[Overzeetop]

When you specify that a batteries maximum envelope is X, and the supplier provides a battery which has a maximum envelope greater than X then, yes, it's a supplier problem.

When you request 2 million batteries instead of 200,000, and your supplier changes the process which induces a flaw into the product then, yes, it's a supplier problem.

This is critical because the "engineers" (idiots) over at ExtremeTech published "findings" (a middle school essay on their thought experiment backed up with zero observed failures) said that the problem was in the case and had nothing to do with the design of the battery. Blaming the phone case for the problem is like blaming users hands for the iPhone antenna problem. It's not a problem with what it holding the (iPhone, battery) but rather that the (iPhone, battery) was not designed properly for the specified requirements.

In both cases, it's imperative that the overall product producer take responsibility to the end users for products which do not work as intended. Which they did - recalling the devices, offer full refunds and - in many cases - a credit for accessories that you didn't even purchase from them.