Back when it seemed like the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was seemingly a stellar hit for Samsung, disaster soon struck.
The Galaxy Note 7 literally blew up in Samsung’s face. At first, it seemed like small incidents were occurring in which Samsung Note phone batteries were catching fire and exploding. More of these stories kept coming up in the news stream until it eventually became a code red for Samsung. Airlines soon placed a ban on Samsung Note phones and Samsung had to issue a massive recall.
Samsung was a laughing joke of the tech industry.
So what happened? Why were these phones exploding all over the place?
Samsung Explains It All
Yesterday, Samsung help a press conference and detailed what exactly went wrong with the Galaxy Note 7.
Samsung stated that there were two flaws with the Note 7 batteries.
Firstly, the first batteries that were installed had a design flaw which would cause short circuits. The second batteries which were used for the replacement units issues, had a manufacturing issue that could lead to fires because of a welding defect.
The result was obtained when Samsung conducted extensive tests with 200,000 phones and 30,000 extra batteries.
It was a great support for transparency by Samsung to openly reveal with this data and it’s a good first step to winning back trust of its customers.
Samsung also provided an infographic to visually explain the problem:
The next step on winning back the trust of consumers, Samsung detailed a new procedure that they will undertake in testing batteries in their product lineups.
The procedure includes:
- Durability testing
- Visual inspections
- X-rays
- Charge and Discharge tests
- Tests of total volatile organic compounds
- Disassembling tests
- Accelerated usage tests, and
- Open circuit voltage tests
- Samsung New Battery Test Procedure
It’s nice to see Samsung openly come out with these new procedures. Samsung is not the only phone manufacturer to have their phones’ battery catch fire in public. I hope other phone manufacturers are employing the same vigorous testing of their batteries in order not to go through what Samsung went through.
Will all these new safety procedures and show of transparency win back Samsung customers in time for the Samsung Galaxy 8 which comes out this year?
I’m sure Samsung hopes so.
