Gadgetory

by now everyone is pretty much aware that the Samsung Galaxy Note seven has a tendency to spontaneously catch fire but it's only after months of investigating that Samsung is opening up about why the recall phone was overheating and it turns out it all comes down to poorly made batteries specifically there were two separate battery defects one in the original batch of note 7s and another in the replacement units to understand what exactly went wrong you have to understand what's inside a lithium-ion battery it may look like just a thin square but inside it resembles something like this snack-cake thin layers of positive and negative electrodes are folded up like a jelly roll with a super thin separator keeping the positive and negative layers from touching if for any reason the folds aren't all just right and the layers get squished or if it touch boom you got a short-circuit and a phone on fire according to Samsung the original batteries were a bit squished in the upper right corner and the tip of the negative layer curved over additionally one of the ends was sitting in the wrong spot of the fold the second set of replacement batteries suffered a different problem these came from another supplier and in the rush to pump out replacement batteries quickly the manufacturer was sloppy and the separator was punctured leaving the layers touching in some cases there was even some insulation missing inside to solve the mystery of the exploding phones Samsung created a special facility to test more than 200,000 phones and more than 30,000 batteries Samsung also worked with three independent testing agencies but now Samsung faces a bigger mystery will customers trust the brand again here's the take from CNN executive editor roger chang who spoke with samsung executives so i think they're taking the right first step in being as transparent as possible they're really going into detail over sharing on exactly what happened to both the first and second batch of note sevens i think there's so long road ahead of them when it comes to building back that credibility with consumers to catch future mistakes samsung said it is implementing additional safety checks for batteries such as beefing up the stress tests and x-ray exams and charging and discharging the batteries on a large scale the upcoming Galaxy s8 and note eight will also go through these tests that's right Samsung is continuing the Note brand with a new one believing that there are enough loyal fans who will give the phone another chance for Sienna I'm Bridget Carey