Samsung details causes of Note 7 fires but questions remain

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA >> Samsung says a thorough investigation into the fireprone Galaxy Note 7 phone has confirmed widely held suspicions that its batteries were to blame, marking a first but important step toward restoring consumer confidence.

Samsung announced tighter quality controls and more rigorous testing and took responsibility for failing to ensure that design specifications given to its suppliers were failsafe. The South Korean company was also delaying its next Galaxy phone, the Galaxy S8, which is usually announced in February.

The spontaneous fires, many chronicled in videos circulated on YouTube, prompted Samsung to recall millions of phones and take a $5.3 billion hit on its earnings — and an unknown amount in reputation.

While praising Samsung’s frankness and apologies, analysts question whether the world’s largest smartphone maker has really gotten to the bottom of the problem in blaming flaws in the design and production of batteries.

“Samsung said the weaknesses could make the phone prone to catch fire. That I understand, but what did trigger fires in such conditions? Did they discuss if there is another cause? No,” said Park Chul Wan, a former director of the next generation battery research center at the state-owned Korea Electronics Technology Institute.

Forrester analyst Frank Gillett said the company’s emphasis seems to be on detecting problems in manufacturing, not preventing design problems earlier. The company, he said, needs to find ways to prevent commercial pressures, such as getting a phone out quickly, from causing engineers to make bad decisions. Samsung’s Note 7 was timed, in part, to beat Apple’s iPhone 7 by weeks.

Ramon Llamas, an analyst at research firm IDC, said he would like to see Samsung show more of a “human side” to solving its problem and say what it’s doing to work with consumers affected by this.

During a two-hour press conference livestreamed in English, Chinese and Korean, Samsung said tests involving more than 200,000 phones and 30,000 batteries showed different problems with both kinds of batteries used in the Note 7.