Now that Samsung has made the move to globally recall the Galaxy Note 7 (a second time), and cancel production of the line entirely, the process has moved to figuring out how this problem came to pass. The latest addition to the growing list of problems to be solved is the fact that (and question why) Samsung did the testing on the batteries in-house.
From one view, this shouldn’t really be an issue, as Samsung does have their own certified testing lab, which meets all the regulatory requirements of such a facility. The potential issues Samsung face now are:
- Was there something missed or omitted in testing that led to the battery issues?
- Was a blind eye turned to a potential issue that manifested in exploding phones?
- Was the fact that it’s their flagship an influencing factor in the testing?
There could be any number of reasons that the testing failed to detect batteries that explode, but one thing is for sure – we’ll hear more about this before too long.
What possible explanation could there be for a flaw like this in a product to be missed?
It’s still plausible that the batteries weren’t the problem; it could have been another hardware component. Shorting a battery (or causing drain at an excessive rate beyond specifications) could cause them to explode. Given that both Samsung and TDK produced batteries had the issue I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the case. These devices are so tightly engineered that it’d only take one component to be out-of-spec once per thousand units to cause the failure rates reported.
The headline of your article is slightly misleading; it suggests there is a developing news story that you’re breaking whereas it’s simply just a list of questions to the readers?
You can’t give a company a free ride so the questions are a good one but often the biggest problem with all testing is that its done in ideal conditions with premium/untouched devices (I guess). Do companies test dropping devices, leaving them in pockets, etc etc in their battery tests? I’ve been in software support for a long time and a customer once said “it was good” an issue didn’t have consistently. I actually laughed and said actually consistent issue are the best as they are the easiest to find the issue and fix! Its when they are inconsistent, seemingly… Read more »