Samsung's probe into its Galaxy Note
7 fiasco has found that the overheating and burning of the phones was
caused by faults with their batteries.
The firm had axed its iPhone rival in October last year after an earlier botched recall and re-release.
The recall is thought to have cost $5.3bn (£4.3bn) and was hugely damaging for the South Korean firm's reputation.
On Monday, Samsung said that neither software nor hardware were at fault, only the batteries.
Internal
and independent investigations "concluded that batteries were found to
be the cause of the Note 7 incidents", the South Korean technology giant
said in a statement.
So what went wrong?
The company said that errors both in design and manufacturing affected batteries by two different manufacturers.
According
to the findings, the problems centred on insufficient insulation
material within the batteries and a design that did not give enough room
to safely accommodate the batteries' electrodes.
Samsung said it was "taking responsibility for our failure to
ultimately identify and verify the issues arising out of the battery
design and manufacturing process".
The smartphone giant did not
name the battery suppliers during their Monday presentation, though last
year had identified them as their affiliate Samsung SDI and Chinese
company Amperex Technology.
Samsung said it did not plan to take
legal action and that it accepted responsibility for asking the
suppliers to meet certain specifications.
Launched in August 2016, Samsung's Note 7 device was marketed as a
large-screen top-end device and positioned as a rival to Apple's iPhone.
In September though, Samsung had to recall about 2.5 million phones after complaints of overheating and exploding batteries.
The
firm insisted that all replaced devices were safe. However, that was
followed by reports that those phones were also overheating.
Lessons to learn
The company said there would be no repeat of the fires in future devices such as the upcoming S8.
"We
look forward to moving ahead with a renewed commitment to safety. The
lessons of the past several months are now deeply reflected in our
processes and in our culture."
The firm also said it would not
unveil its upcoming Galaxy S8 phone at the Mobile World Congress in
Barcelona as had been expected, suggesting the flagship model's launch
may be later in the year than its 2016 version.
The head of the
firm's smartphone business, Koh Dong-jin said the phone would not get a
launch event at the event in Barcelona later in February unlike previous
Galaxy S smartphones.
No comments:
Post a Comment