Gadgetory

rechargeable lithium-ion batteries are everywhere electronics tablets laptops cars and pretty much every single cell phone and most of the time these with the embattled as the lithium fail-safes are in place fail-safes that work Samsung just voluntarily recalled an estimated two million Galaxy Note sevens as a safety precaution since some of the batteries are exploding inside of the phone obviously random explosions are not a feature that most people look for when purchasing a cell phone so let's take a look at the note 7 and assess why it might spontaneously combust during charging the phone is protected by multiple fail safes first of all you have the part that plugs into the wall the charger and the cable if the charger is faulty or not designed specifically for your phone it can affect the safety of the battery it can destroy the battery's protection circuit which I'll show you in a second the charging port is also a fail-safe it tries to do its best to protect the phone and the battery from faulty chargers and incorrect electrical flow but as a last resort the battery also has its own failsafe built in here is where the battery plugs into the motherboard to receive its juice and supply the phone power then we have this circuit board also called the protection circuit at the top of the battery this controls the flow of electricity and the temperature of the lithium all at the embattled is board it makes sure that the battery does not overcharge and as a thermal fuse of sorts that will blow if the temperature gets too hot thus protecting the lithium inside from rapid unplanned catastrophic disassembly the body of the battery is typically two layers the anode and the cathode which are separated by an electrically conducting fluid this is oily and smells surprisingly of burnt skittles the combination of these elements allow your phone to charge and function as long as the battery protection circuitry is working correctly and the electricity and the temperature of the lithium are regulated if it is not regulated correctly during charging the lithium will react violently so if you look at one of the exploded phones we can see which of the fail-safes is failing at being safe the charging port sits here inside of the phone and there are no burn marks near the port or where the port connects the motherboard but we do see some scorching where the battery sits not where it plugs into the mainboard which would be about here but it explodes in the center of the battery around the battery hole in the thick aluminum mid frame so on this particular exploded note seven all of the connections are good just the battery itself isn't behaving Tesla cars are also powered by lithium batteries the Model S had a small issue at the beginning of production where the batteries on the undercarriage could get punctured by de breeze on the road which could cause the lithium battery under the car to explode Tesla corrected this problem by adding a titanium puncture proof under plate to the Model S but the note seven batteries are definitely not being punctured internally since there is nothing to poke them on the inside as you can see from my teardown video it's it's on smooth aluminum so since the note seven battery isn't being punctured that narrows it down to overcharging shorting or impurities in the battery itself a small metal impurity in the lithium could short it out personally I think the problem has to do with the little circuit board failing at the top of the battery from what I have read about the people who have complained publicly about their note 7 exploding is that the phone was charging when it happened the phone starts charging and the tiny regulator doesn't do his job and the battery enters into a thermal runaway and the voltage regulator can't stop the chain reaction since this particular note 7 battery isn't plugged into the phone right now my tweezers are acting as the other possible failure point a metal impurity in the manufacturing of the battery that could possibly short out the battery all of this smoke and fire would be under extreme pressure locked inside of your watertight note 7 the more pressure there is the bigger the explosion remember that this only happens in a very small number of devices so far it's only happened on 35 phones out of 2 million so yeah definitely take advantage of the recall but also feel free to use your phone as normal in the mean time just don't set it on your lap while it's plugged into the wall and maybe take a fire extinguisher with you to bed just in case my Instagram followers saw the results of this combustion before the video was posted to youtube so follow me there if you want to stay updated on my future projects subscribing to my youtube channel is always free I review technology from the inside thanks ton for watching hope to see you around