Everyone remembers the ill-fated Samsung Galaxy Note7 saga all too well. Poor Samsung of course still have nightmares about it but to their credit they have changed their manufacturing processes and have implemented numerous checks to ensure it does not occur again. Unfortunately that stigma will follow them for a while as proven by a lawsuit in the US that became public yesterday.
A Long Island (USA) real estate agent, Diane Chung, has claimed that her Galaxy Note9 randomly caught on fire at “just after midnight”. Apparently Ms Chung then “heard a whistling and screeching sound, and she noticed thick smoke”. This all occurred while she was in a lift which is not a great place to have this happen. The phone was then dunked in a bucket of water (which just happened to be there luckily) by a random passerby not long after the lift stopped at the lobby.
Of course, the US being the US, a lawsuit has now resulted with the plaintiff suing Samsung for “unspecified damages and a restraining order barring the sales of any Galaxy Note 9s.” Samsung are of course taking the matter seriously and are investigating the incident even though it is just a single isolated incident — the Galaxy Note7 fiasco did have to start somewhere after all.
We have not received any reports of similar incidents involving a Galaxy Note9 device and we are investigating the mattera Samsung spokesperson
Samsung have taken a lot of measures with the safety of their batteries with not just the added safety check but also deliberately not pushing the envelope with battery size and/or charging speeds. Let’s hope this is a one-off occurrence, because electronics sometimes do catch on fire – rarely, but it happens.
The whole scenario seems far fetched to me and incredibly convenient for the plaintiff, and, well it is the US where lawsuits are aplenty, but you never know- stranger things have happened. Stay tuned.
There’s an inverse relationship between the anount of energy a lithium battery can hold, and its volatility. Increase the energy density of the battery and it’s more likely to erupt.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was just one example of this. Another was the Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft. It uses banks of large lithium batteries under the floor, instead of the traditional pneumatic controls of conventional aircraft. But Boeing came unstuck and had some near misses as the high-density lithium batteries erupted.