
Galaxy Note7: What We Discovered - richardboegli
https://news.samsung.com/global/infographic-galaxy-note7-what-we-discovered
======
owenversteeg
Since I have a bit of experience in the world of batteries I thought I'd post.

First of all, deflected electrodes, insufficient insulation tape, and high
welding burrs are absolutely fine explanations for what happened here. As
someone who works with batteries, that would tell me everything I wanted to
know. If I was running a battery fab, I'd be able to check for these problems
in 20 minutes.

Further in the favor of Samsung is that battery fabs are some of the most
opaque places in the world. They never release any information of any value
whatsoever to the outside, and there are only a handful in the world. For
Samsung to release something like this so candidly is absolutely unprecedented
in the world of batteries; I was shocked when I saw the post.

Say what you will about Samsung in general, or about their treatment of the
whole process, but posting this is a first among any of the major battery
manufacturers and shocked me with its level of openness and detail.

\-------------------

If anyone doubts this, try getting information on the closest battery fab to
you. You can try to find what batteries they produce, but chances are that's
not public. You can try to find their name, or if they still exist, but that's
probably also not public. You might eventually find an address, and you might
go there, but when you arrive you'll be forcibly removed from the area by
armed security and/or police. To give an example, there are a couple debates
in the industry about what company acquired another company. It's years after
the supposed acquisition, and nobody knows anything.

The battery industry is a whole secretive world of its own, and this is
because batteries are simultaneously a low-profit commodity and a gateway to
unlimited riches. If Apple is successful with its dream technology, it might
capture 50% of the world smartphone market instead of the 14% it has now. If a
battery company is successful, it will become successful beyond your wildest
dreams. Lots of things are just on the edge of being possible with today's
battery tech. The first one to 'win' gets to go from selling a couple billion
of batteries (to small fish, like EV and power tool makers) to selling
trillions of dollars to everyone that will buy, including every electric
utility in the world that will be ecstatic to have the perfect demand-
smoothing device.

~~~
xenadu02
My question is why wasn't their QA process catching this in the factory?
Especially after the first recall. It seems like they didn't bother making a
special effort to verify the second battery source was producing good
batteries.

(I honestly have no idea, I'm not involved in manufacturing.)

~~~
kurthr
It's worth noting that the number of actual failures is measurable only after
millions had shipped. 10-100 dppm is a reasonable guess (~100 phones out of
2.7M shipped) with relatively low "infant mortality" until they were
compressed into a phone and used (and abused as normal).

As a tester, you build a 10k ($10M) unit test run and none of them fail, and
then another 10k ($10M) run and again none of them fail... statistically you
might not expect reliably catch a single failure until you run 10 times....
that's a $100M test you need to get your boss to sign off on.

Note that when you get a failure it will burn up and you won't be able to
identify the cause.

Now, if you knew the failure mode, you could test for it directly and you
wouldn't have to waste an entire assembled phone in a destructive evaluation,
but that's hind sight. The failure defects they see seem like pretty standard
problems, but other than sampling, I'm still not sure how they are going to
catch them in manufacturing.

What's amazing is that more batteries don't go up (the original Prius was
notorious).

~~~
Dylan16807
Missing insulation especially sounds like a problem that would be in a whole
lot of batteries, and should be easy to find in a test run.

~~~
grandalf
It was only a factor after the case had been partially damaged. Let's hope
that the testing procedure will start to inflict similar damage to catch this
sort of failure more quickly.

~~~
Dylan16807
It only causes a fire if there are other factors. But it's very easy to find
on an intact battery being examined for flaws.

------
JohnJamesRambo
I'm pretty proud of them for making an easy to understand infographic about
the problem instead of a bunch of text jargon.

~~~
quanticle
I hope you're being sarcastic. I, for one, would have preferred an actual root
cause analysis, with all the technical detail. This just feels vaguely
patronizing, like Samsung expects me to not be able to understand the
electrical details.

I mean, I get why they're releasing a summary infographic. The fewer details
they release, the fewer things they're vulnerable to lawsuits over. But at the
same time, I do think that it's important for society as a whole for companies
to release the root-cause-analyses when their products have caused harm, so
that other companies in the future know exactly what to watch out far and what
sorts of designs to avoid. Right now, there's nothing preventing some other
phone manufacturer from making the same mistakes as Samsung, with the same
results.

~~~
bigtones
The root cause analysis from three different engineering firms is in the
linked analyst reports in the footer. Samsung are not being patronising,
they're producing content all their affected customers can understand with the
infographic, and for those that are more technically inclined or curious -
they releasing the technical reports they commissioned in full with all the
analysis and findings. You can't fault them for that level of disclosure.

~~~
dfox
Actually, the linked pdf's are presentation slides that do not contain any
relevant information that is not in the infographic. On the other hand, on
this level there is not much more to say, finding and removing the true root
cause (ie. "this process step was badly designed") is problem of the battery
manufacturer and not Samsung itself.

~~~
ryao
Wasn't Samsung one of the battery manufacturers for the Samsung Galaxy Note 7?

------
richardboegli
Samsung Announces New and Enhanced Quality Assurance Measures to Improve
Product Safety [https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-announces-new-and-
en...](https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-announces-new-and-enhanced-
quality-assurance-measures-to-improve-product-safety)

Also a YouTube video with findings and new Quality Assurance Measures
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeKdcIOAEL8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeKdcIOAEL8)

------
heisenbit
The MSN reports this as battery defects. Both "defects" were however made more
critical by the tight containment within the phone. It is not simply a
component but a system engineering issue - from objective, design, tooling,
manufacturing to QC. Like with the Challenger disaster there is a cultural
problem.

The press release calls into question that Samsung fully owns up to it.

------
asafira
I'm glad my question was finally answered! During the paranoia in
September/October, I remember reading everything and wondering why nothing
seemed to explain _why_ the issue happened in the first place. Note7's aren't
exactly the only tech with batteries...

Otherwise, sorry for being negative, but this doesn't seem like a very
complicated reason for the batteries to have been defective, right? Why didn't
they just release this a couple of weeks after the incidents started
happening? (Did they want to confirm with a large number of the recalled ones
they got back you think?)

~~~
chinhodado
There were about 100 reported incidents out of something like 2.5 million Note
7 manufactured, so whatever the defect is it is not a common one and thus hard
to find and confirmed. Not to mention most of the phones with problem burned
so you can't "debug" them directly.

------
richardboegli
A few more sites: [http://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/galaxy-
story/note7-pres...](http://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/galaxy-
story/note7-press-conference-detail/)
[http://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/galaxy-
story/note7-pres...](http://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/galaxy-
story/note7-press-conference-detail2/)

------
iscrewyou
Missing insulation tape. That one made me say, "of course they caught on
fire."

~~~
yongjik
> Missing insulation tape.

Yeah, wow, how does that even happen?

~~~
nitrogen
It looks like, based on the infographic, the insulation tape was punctured by
overly tall welds.

~~~
mparlane
That is not the missing insulation the parent comment is talking about. The
insulation puncture is another fault.

------
ChuckMcM
I realize they had to root cause this problem but it was interesting to see
and I wonder if they fired the Battery manufacturer.

The other thing I find interesting is that given the root cause they could
essentially do 100% battery screening and have a lot of stock of G7's. They
would be better than a cheap android phone in a magazine advertisement[1] :-).
Also the G7 has a gorgeous screen, I wonder if those are being recycled into
new gear or if there is some booth selling off screens somewhere.

[1] [http://mashable.com/2012/10/02/ew-has-smartphone-
inside/#Nq6...](http://mashable.com/2012/10/02/ew-has-smartphone-
inside/#Nq6dEIiFaGqs)

~~~
mojoB
The original batteries were supplied by Samsung SDI [1], so I doubt there
would be any firing. I haven’t seen the who the second supplier was.

[1]
[http://www.gsmarena.com/galaxy_note7_will_longer_come_with_s...](http://www.gsmarena.com/galaxy_note7_will_longer_come_with_samsung_sdi_batteries-
news-20358.php)

~~~
MikusR
Reports say that it was Amperex Technology (ATL)

~~~
amgin3
..Who is secretly owned by Apple.

~~~
dba7dba
I'm not sure if you are joking or not. But if it's true, that was a nice
revenge (with tools that self destruct) by Apple against Samsung. Intentional
or not... Lol.

------
sschueller
Now if the battery would have been removable this would probably have worked
out a lot different.

Why do we not have standardized removable batteries for mobile phones?

~~~
BinaryIdiot
> Why do we not have standardized removable batteries for mobile phones?

Because customers don't want them. Yes yes I know almost everyone, including
myself, on HN and probably a good chunk of Reddit _does_ want removable
batteries. But the majority of customers simply do not care and having them
non-removable means it's easier to make them properly water proof or
resistant, thinner and larger batteries (easier to cram into the available
space).

Another thing to keep in mind is the average life span of a phone in the US is
2 years. That amount of time is unlikely to wear a battery into being useless
so you're only going to need to replace it if you are a heavy phone user and
carry additional(s) batteries with you.

~~~
hrrsn
I should point out for years we had phones with replaceable batteries. I
didn't know anybody that carried one with them.

~~~
mirekrusin
Those phones were lasting for a week on single charge but novadays phones are
hungry, many people carry external power banks or whatever they call them
these days. I would happily use swappable battery. Design could also be
improved so you can quickly slide empty battery out and charged one back in.
Phones could have tiny built in battery which would make the process without
the need to turn off/on the phone.

~~~
jsjohnst
As someone who seems to be a vocal advocate for swappable batteries, I've got
a genuine honest question to ask. What's significantly better about a
swappable battery vs. an appropriately sized for your needs USB battery pack?

~~~
gregmac
One big benefit is being able to replace the battery after the capacity is
reduced due to age. If you get a new phone every couple years anyway this is
probably less of a concern, but it's rather nice to be able to spend tens of
dollars to get 100% capacity again vs hundreds of dollars for a new phone
(even if it's a bit faster).

~~~
jsjohnst
Even the new iPhone 7 (picking it as Apple is potentially the worst at user
friendliness re: batteries) can have its battery replaced fairly easily if its
aging. Yes, it's not as simple as popping a latch and snapping in a new one,
but it's still very achievable and for a reasonable price (unless you go to
Apple that is).

~~~
soundwave106
Having a replaceable battery has easily extended the life of my Samsung Galaxy
S3, which has lost the ability to charge through the micro USB port (from what
I understand this is a fairly common problem).

There are certainly other ways to fix this issue (ranging from switching to
inductive charging to, if your good with soldering, actually swapping out the
micro USB port on the board). But swapping out a battery is so simple, even
not very technically inclined people can do it.

I'm not sure I could say the same for something like a iPhone 7 battery swap
(such as this --
[https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+7+Battery+Replacement/67...](https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+7+Battery+Replacement/67528)
) -- I agree it looks doable, but non-technically inclined people might run
away from those type of instructions.

~~~
jsjohnst
There are numerous places across the globe that will do the work cheaply,
usually for about the price you'd pay for an extra battery for the few modern
phones that allow you to swap batteries still.

------
yeukhon
I recommend the video explanation: [https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-
announces-new-and-en...](https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-announces-
new-and-enhanced-quality-assurance-measures-to-improve-product-safety)

------
sengork
This entire ordeal would have been so much less impactful to both Samsung and
the end users if they simply went down the old and proven replaceable battery
route. Not to mention it'd very likely be much more economical and eco-
friendly from overall end-to-end perspective. It has consumed the time and
resources they could have otherwise devoted to innovating for next generation
of the phone lines.

All they needed to sacrifice is about ~1mm of phone thickness...

------
dghughes
Even so I still think Samsung phones are getting worse for quality as each
year passes the quality is rapidly declining.

My old Samsung Galaxy S2 is still going strong no screen protector, whatever
OS version it is now, and the original battery.

I gave the S2 to my dad for a while then I gave him my old S3 so then my
sister got the S2 and it still has no scratches on the screen still works
great.

The S3 was my second one it was replaced after the screen spontaneously
cracked now it's on it's third battery and the WiFi had stopped working. The
screen has a scratch on it too I barely got it home before it was scratched I
didn't even have time to buy a screen protector.

My S5 is failing even faster and I am also on my third battery soon to be
fourth. The screen scratches far easier than the S2.

My next phone will not be a Samsung.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Anecdata, anecdata... My experience is quite the opposite. My current phone is
Galaxy S7, and I'm very happy with it. Close to year of use without any screen
protector whatsoever, and it only recently got some tiny, barely visible
scratches (I think I may have accidentally put it with something sharp in the
same pocket). My previous phone, S4, survived a lot of abuse, including
breaking the glass _twice_ ; when I switched to S7, it was still perfectly
fine, so I gave it to my brother. My SO's S3 works fine to this day; only
recently I replaced her the broken glass.

The only issue my SO and I have with our phones is that, in time, they get
annoyingly slow. But I can't really blame Samsung for the absurd amount of
software bloat the mobile ecosystem accrues every year. Same crap is
continuing to eat desktop and web anyway.

(I'm dreading the day when someone will have the brilliant idea of porting
Electron to Android...)

------
richardboegli
Announcement: [https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-electronics-
announce...](https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-electronics-announces-
cause-of-galaxy-note7-incidents-in-press-conference)

------
pasta
Maybe all those Note7s are already recycled, but couldn't they just release it
again with good batteries?

Or would replacing the battery and re-distributing the phone cost more than
just release a new phone?

~~~
ninkendo
Didn't they already do that once though? The problem was the new battery was
bad too. If lightning strikes twice you generally don't take a third chance,
at least not when the PR is this bad.

------
chinhodado
Props to Samsung. They reacted fast to the incidents, quickly announced
recalls and worked hard to convince people to return their devices, launched
in depth investigation, identified the problem and made changes to their
processes.

If the result of the investigation is correct then they have different flaws
in both the original and new batteries, which is quite unfortunate. The fiasco
costed them something like $17B so they can't afford to have it happen again.

~~~
kevinchen
?????

I'm having trouble thinking of a more poorly organized recall in consumer
electronics:

\- Samsung initially refused to work with US regulators (CPSC) to coordinate a
recall.

\- They didn't communicate to customers the danger of the situation until
_after_ people got burned and there was widespread media coverage.

\- They didn't work with carriers to allow returns in stores. People who
bought their Note 7's through their carriers weren't clear on how they could
return the phone. In some cases, the store employees even told customers that
they couldn't swap the device.

\- For those who managed to swap their phones, the replacement had the same
issue. They had a defective battery because they rushed Note 7 develpment --
you'd think they would have learned not to rush the recall...

~~~
makomk
To be fair, they probably didn't expect their other supplier of batteries to
have another, totally different flaw that caused those batteries to catch fire
too.

~~~
kevinchen
When you ship a product to millions of customers, you don't "expect" or assume
anything. You have your own people, on your payroll, test parts before they
get used.

~~~
zymhan
If you can define a testing regimen that would have caught this issue, I'm
sure Samsung would gladly pay you in suitcases of cash.

------
djsumdog
Big Clive does a really amazing (and dangerous) tear down of what's inside a
Lithium Ion cell, in case anyone wants to see what the parts in the diagram
physically look like:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI1eRy0uBI8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI1eRy0uBI8)

------
newtorob
This whole thing would have been avoided easily, if the batteries were
removable.

------
c3534l
I think the Galaxy Note 7 is going to become a classic business case study.
They did everything right following the crisis and in the follow-up
investigation. I wonder how will it will actually pan out for them, though.

~~~
megablast
Really? They were late in doing a recall, the government had to do one first.
Then they finally did, but not in every country (they still haven't done one
in many countries). Then they re-released the phone that was still exploding.

How anyone can say they did everything right is insane.

~~~
syshum
1\. Which government did this Recall? In the US all Recalls were Voluntary as
defined under US CPSC Rules

2\. None of the phones "Exploded" they caught fire, big difference

3\. What exactly do you believe they should have have done differently

------
richardboegli
TL;DR Both batteries had a design / fabrication error which caused issues

~~~
canistr
It's also important to mention that there were two different batteries (based
on 1st and 2nd recalls) with two different flaws.

~~~
libeclipse
_each_ with two different flaws

------
SaaSAddict
At least they admit to theit mistakes...

------
hetfeld
What about independent researches and tests that all state obvious facts -
battery is not that bad, but the overall internal construction was flawed the
battery was positioned close to high-heating elements which caused the
overheating the battery and blasts. Pathetic false statements from Samsung,
but nothing new. Who can trust this crooked company after such bs
explanations...

~~~
BinaryIdiot
I'm confused. The only "independent research" I've seen regarding the battery
has been articles written by people guessing (maybe educated but still a
guess) at the problem.

Was there independent research outside of the 3 separate companies Samsung
used? Is their research available for download and how does it compare with
the 4 sets of research in the linked article above?

> Who can trust this crooked company after such bs explanations...

Considering there really wasn't a lot of exploding phones they recalled pretty
damn quickly. Why would they even lie here? What would they gain? If they lie,
do it again and they're going have to take them all back again.

I don't get what you're going on about.

~~~
hetfeld
Removing videos from youtube of explosions.

------
partycoder
It will be hard for them to recover from this. They will have to aggressively
lower the prices to attract customers.

------
hisham_hm
Is it me or the zoomed-out images for both sides in the Main Cause section of
Battery B are the same? They clearly shouldn't be when they expand to such
different images, and the difference is precisely what the infographic is
trying to explain.

It seems to me it's a classic copy-and-paste error caused by haste/laziness.
How ironic that the infographic made to explain the buggy batteries is buggy
as well.

