Roger Fingas
Internally, Samsung has concluded that the battery — and not any faults in software, or other hardware — was reportedly to blame for the fires that led to the recall and ultimate cancellation of the Galaxy Note 7.
The company was finally able to reproduce the fires during the course of its investigation, and ruled out other causes, a source told Reuters. It's not yet clear though whether Samsung is blaming defective parts, or as is sometimes suspected, that there was simply too little space allocated for the battery.
Samsung will likely officially announce the results of its investigation on Jan. 23, a day before it puts out fourth-quarter financial results, the source said. At the same time, the company is expected to detail plans to prevent future catastrophes — something critical if it wants healthy sales of its upcoming flagship handset, the Galaxy S8.
The investigation was originally launched in October, when Samsung halted Note 7 production. The company promised to hire third-party firms to help.
The Note 7 was allegedly rushed to market to seize more sales from Apple, which was preparing to launch the iPhone 7. As a consequence of the fires, though, Samsung is now expected to take a financial hit upwards of $5.2 billion.
Compounding the situation, the acting head of the company — Lee Jae-yong — has been served with an arrest warrant for his supposed involvement in the influence-peddling scandal involving South Korean President Park Geun-hye and her friend Choi Soon-sil. Other corporations in the country, such as LG and Hyundai, have also become embroiled.
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29 Comments
Well, you have Samsung investigating the fires and Samsung releasing the results of the investigation. They have a vested interest in preventing this from happening again, but also a vested interest in not releasing any details that would be (further) bad PR for the company, so I'm not sure how much you can take from this.
My take is that Samsung is just like most, if not all other tech companies. Pressure to release devices that are more feature-packed, faster, more powerful and yet smaller than the last generation, and more importantly do it before the competition. Engineering can't keep up with the demands of marketing and management and lo and behold something like this happens.
Samsung has hit a new low. If you think their phones have issues, try to get one of their Appliances fixed.
I feel like the title should have read: Samsung testing confirms [a] battery [of] problems to blame for Galaxy Note 7 fires