Samsung faced issues with the Galaxy Note 7, its latest flagship phablet, soon after its launch earlier this year, ultimately leading to the unit being discontinued altogether. Now, according to a report from The New York Times, it’s been revealed that Samsung may not have any idea why the Galaxy Note 7 is catching fire, smoking, and in some cases causing physical damage to owners and property. The report reveals that Samsung is not able to replicate the issue at all, despite dispatching hundreds of employees to try and figure out the root cause. Unfortunately, the report also states that while Samsung was unable to discover the issue, the company might have been too quick to blame the battery for the issue, blaming a “minor manufacturing flaw” related to its affiliate Samsung SDI. As a result of that decision, Samsung worked with a different supply partner, ATL, and those replacement units had their own issues as well, with more devices catching fire. Park Chul-wan is the former director of the Center for Advanced Batteries at the Korea Electronics Technology Institute, and he spoke with the publication regarding the issue at hand, saying: On top of all that, and perhaps more damning, is the publication’s reveal that Samsung actually blocked communications between the engineers it had sent out to discover the problem. The company apparently feared legal issue, so any written communication was barred. As a result, engineers could not work together, form theories, or build off findings to perhaps discover a root cause. In a separate report from Bloomberg, investigators are reportedly coming forward to say that they believe a battery issue is at fault for the situation, but in the replacement units. According to the publication, the initial flaw with the first batch of Galaxy Note 7 shipments was probably not related to the battery at all (which would line up with the findings from the NYT), but in Samsung’s rush to use ATL and replace the batteries, the replacement models may suffer from a battery issue that is causing the devices to catch fire. Whether it’s batteries or simply too much technology crammed into a rushed design, the results are the same: a discontinued flagship smartphone, and Samsung left to pick up the pieces. The issue may have crept into the supply line after Samsung began replacing Note 7 phones that were equipped with batteries made by Samsung SDI Co., said the person, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the issue. The SDI batteries were slightly too large for the phone, according to a U.S. consumer-safety agency. Samsung is a major shareholder in Samsung SDI.”
