Samsung Could Be Done with Note 7 Explosions Investigations – Report
Samsung has been looking to get it right for a while now in their race to still stay ahead of Android competition and hold most of the shares in this market likewise. Of a similar kind, they are also trying to compete with Apple who sells an entirely different kind of software and hardware types to this South Korean OEM but still manages to take a hold on the market. Year after year, Samsung releases a device to beat the Cupertino-based company, but they always have a means of hitting back before that year runs out and every time, Apple comes out tops. This year was looking like the exception, though. Samsung launched the Galaxy S7 and its Edge variant to much acclaim and positivity in the market and to further put a nail in the coffin that they were planning for Apple, all they needed was killer Note device. That was just what they made – a Galaxy Note 7 that was perfect in all ramifications, if not that it was a time bomb.
After the first recall of the device, the battery units that were placed in the faulty ones that exploded were blamed, and they were exchanged for other units. This time around, things spun out of control again, and the company had no other choice but to totally recall all of the units of this particular model that they had in the market. As a precaution, Samsung went as far as discontinuing it because it had caused so much harm already. A year that was perfectly shaping up to be the point of breakthrough ended up in their worst disaster ever. Ever since the recall was underway, though, Samsung had promised us that they would take the faulty devices back into the lab to get what the cause of the explosions could be and now, there are reports out of Korea that this investigation has been completed. Samsung, however, might not be willing to share that information with the general public yet.
There are likewise, other reports making the rounds that the documents where the investigation was detailed has been obtained and Samsung has credited the explosion factor and the overheating problem to a manufacturing issue, which has since been submitted to the Korea Agency for Technology and Standards. We don’t know for sure if these reports are true or not because the company itself is yet to confirm whether the issue has been wrapped up or not but since they have promised to let the public know, only time would be the telling factor here. In what would then be another hypothesis and way of looking at the problem, analyst Shedletsky has opined that the explosions that rocked the Note 7 boat were the fault of Samsung themselves who thought that they could use such an “aggressive design” for a smartphone and get away with it.
Using “aggressive design,” she was referring to the kind of slimness that the Note 7 carried and how it could have affected the amount of compression that the battery would have to suffer. Frankly speaking, this is one logical point of view because the Note 7 was very slim (a feature that we would like even to see on the Note 8 if Samsung can work around the explosion gate) and it would have made for little space for the huge battery packed behind the unit. The constant compression could lead to overheating and with charging worsening the rate of temperature rise, exploding might just be the battery’s way of speaking out.
Another point of view likens the explosions on the Note 7 units (blaming the battery, again) to that which affected a ton of hoverboards also, citing the similarities at the Lithium-ion batteries which powers both design units. As this theory goes, it is widely known that there is always a liquid – the electrolytes – swimming around in the Li-ion batteries and if the battery should short circuit, the thin sheet that separates the negative and positive sides may be punctured, causing the liquid to spill everywhere. When it then overheats, the resulting issue would be an explosion of the said unit. As we have said, all of these are just propositions from people and analysts to get to the bottom of the things, and while they may be right, or close to the truth, it depends on Samsung to give us an official report as to what is going on.
In other related news, though, Samsung hopes to reassure the users of the next Note device by going out to source for the battery component from a third-party supplier, making sure that they have nothing to do with it this time. This was not an easy move for Samsung because they had to go to their local rival, LG, for the power packs that would light up the Note 8 (should they wish to go chronologically). For now, though, sources claim that both companies are still in talks, and nothing has been finalized yet but that doesn’t diminish the chances of it happening.
Soaking on the issue of the Note 7 fiasco was a Samsung executive who would like to remain anonymous, and the representative has said that the explosions were just a rare manufacturing error that didn’t have to mean the death of the Note. Backing up the statement with statistical data, the Samsung representative expressed that the defect was present, about 0.01 percent of all the shipped units and that translates to just 1000 of the total bulk. While this is truly a small number compared to the shipped millions, 1000 potential explosives are still not safe in the market.