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

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.

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.

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.