Samsung Note 7 battery fire woes triggered by rush to beat Apple's iPhone 7 - report
Roger Fingas
The battery fires and eventual recall of the Galaxy Note 7 can all be traced to Samsung executives wanting to rush the phone, based on rumors Apple's iPhone 7 wouldn't have any major improvements, according to a report.
To move up the launch of the Note 7 by 10 days and steal more of Apple's thunder, Samsung executives pushed suppliers into meeting faster deadlines despite the phone's significant feature advancements, sources informed Bloomberg. One supplier commented that Samsung was unusually difficult to work with this time, as the company would repeatedly change its mind about specifications and work flow.
One of the upgrades in the Note 7 is a 3,500 milliamp-hour battery, up from the previous Note's 3,000. Until recently the main battery supplier was Samsung SDI, a company 20 percent owned by Samsung Electronics which also makes batteries for clients like Apple, one source said.
Once the fires began, Samsung Mobile blamed SDI, which initially went on the defensive and suggested that the problem could lay elsewhere, whether in the phone's design or in insulation. Officially Samsung Mobile has since claimed responsibility for the situation. The decision to do a full recall is said to have been instigated by a Samsung engineer asking for one on an internal BBS post, which quickly gained support.
In reports to the governments of Korea, China, and the U.S., Samsung has indicated that a production error resulted in pressure on plates within the batteries, bringing positive and negative poles into contact — in turn generating excess heat. U.S. regulators have specifically suggested that the battery was too big for its compartment.
New Note 7 models will have a battery from Amperex Technology, a subsidiary of Japan's TDK.
The iPhone 7 is generally considered an evolutionary advancement like the iPhone 6s, above all featuring a better processor, water resistance, and new camera technology, including a dual-lens camera on the 7 Plus. Apple is thought to be saving a major redesign for next year's model, which could have an edge-to-edge OLED display with an embedded "virtual button."
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The iPhone 7 is generally considered an evolutionary advancement like the iPhone 6s, above all featuring a better processor, water resistance, and new camera technology, including a dual-lens camera on the 7 Plus. Apple is thought to be saving a major redesign for next year's model, which could have an edge-to-edge OLED display with an embedded "virtual button."
And a bigger battery that works
Why does everyone keep demanding something entirely different every year? What's wrong with simply delivering something that just works? People don't realize how difficult (and unnecessary) a total re-design is. Changing a design to meet the frivolous demands of customers and (especially) crazy analysts does not produce a better product only a different looking one.
The damage caused by this issue will be hitting Samsung far harder than just replacing phones. I bet many are done with Samsung and will never get another one again. So, unless they want to really stick with Android, that leaves them to get this nice shiny new iPhone 7. For Apple, this couldn't have come at a better time and will hurt Samsung worse than anything in the long run. Plus, if there was any sort of physical damage to either someone, or someone's property because of the battery exploding you can bet there will be a mass amount of lawsuits against them all around the world. I hope the media will continue to hit on this. You know damn well they would if this were Apple. It'd be going on for weeks, hell months! They absolutely do not deserve a pass on this!
I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a little shaking of things up in the Samsung Mobile department.