Last August, Samsung was upbeat about its newest smartphone, the Galaxy Note 7. The device, which had managed to net some early positive reviews and was every bit the device to beat for upcoming products from competitors like Apple, was all set to take the market by storm.
A few weeks later when it went on sale, early users started reporting explosions. Samsung issued a voluntary recall and replaced a majority of the devices but that didn’t help matters. A final recall saw the device withdrawn from the market and its production halted.
Three months since Samsung stopped producing and selling the Galaxy Note 7, the company has laid bare the results of its own internal investigation and that conducted by other independent interest parties.
According to the investigation, as many had suspected, the Galaxy Note 7’s problems had everything to do with the battery and nothing else. Two separate malfunctions are to blame for the Galaxy Note 7’s short-lived stay in the market as can be seen from the infographic below released by Samsung earlier today:
While the battery makers, in this case Samsung SDI and ATL (which Samsung curiously declines to name in its report), are to blame, it is Samsung’s strict timelines that resulted in the company not being able to detect the above defects and as such devices went to market with faulty batteries.
Samsung SDI was the main supplier of the batteries in the first batch of Galaxy Note 7s which were eventually recalled and replaced with battery units from ATL. In both instances, however, internal tests by Samsung failed to detect any issues with the battery’s manufacturing up until it was too late.
Here’s to hoping that Samsung has learned something from this particular episode since the Galaxy Note 7 was a fine device by any measure and would’ve easily wound up on the “best of 2016” lists of many had the unfortunate events that happened not happened.
Indeed, the company has already outlined a new 8-point addition to its battery testing process in a bid to make sure the same never happens again.
