USA TODAY International Edition
Note 7 battery problems revealed
Company blames manufacturing and design flaws
Following an investigation that took months, Samsung has revealed the root causes behind those fire-plagued Note 7 phones: design and manufacturing flaws associated with the lithium- ion batteries used in the phones, which were produced by Samsung’s unnamed battery suppliers. The company released the findings at a news conference in Seoul.
Samsung conducted its own internal investigation to determine why some of the devices caught fire, and hired UL, Exponent and TUV Rheinland to conduct their own independent tests.
The Note 7 debacle has been a black eye for Samsung. The phones had to be recalled not once but twice before ultimately being put out to pasture. The episode damaged the Samsung brand and cost the company at least $ 5.3 billion.
“It was a very tough several months for us. Clearly its impact to the consumers, its impact on channel partners and impact on our employees is not insignificant and we embrace that and we own that,” Tim Baxter, president and chief operating officer of Samsung Electronics America told USA TODAY in an interview. “We’ve learned quite a bit about crisis management in the past few months.”
Added Samsung’s Korea- based mobile chief DJ Koh who also spoke to USA TODAY, “We are working around the clock to get back our business, to deliver the best product and get our customers trust back.”
Samsung has been successful in getting the faulty phones back — the company says 97% of the Note 7 phones have been returned, with more than half of the remaining 3% off the network. That’s far above typical product recall return rates.
As part of its investigation, Samsung assigned more than 700 R& D engineers to try to replicate the Note 7 failures, along the way testing more than 200,000 Note 7 phones and more than 30,000 standalone batteries.
The Note 7 involved more than one battery supplier. Thus, some Note 7s used what is being identified as Battery A and some used Battery B. While Samsung dictates the basic battery requirements — energy capacity, voltages, currents, external dimensions, etc. — the partners themselves have leeway in the materials they use and in the way they apply their own intellectual property. That not only meant that Battery A and Battery B were different from one another, but that the problems that surfaced in each also proved to be distinct.
Samsung concluded that the defect associated with Battery A was a design flaw with the battery manufacturer in question not supplying sufficient space in the battery’s pouch to allow electrodes to remain straight.
Battery B, on the other hand, was blamed on a manufacturing defect, related to an abnormal welding process that led to improper contact between a positive tab or terminal and a negative electrode.