http://www.forbes.com/sites/bensin/...ok-the-risk-anyway-say-analysts/#181dc27a4995
Samsung Knew Note 7 Had A Dangerous Design, But Took The Risk Anyway, Say Analysts
December 4, 2016
The mainstream media news cycle has moved on to other inflammatory matters recently (like: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his controversial cabinet picks), but within the smartphone industry, people are still wondering, "just what the hell went wrong with the Galaxy Note 7?"
After all, companies much smaller than Samsung have pumped out dozens and dozens of phones in the past few years without such incidents. How can industry giant Samsung still have no idea as to what led to the failure of its recent flagship?
Well, according to a
respected independent team of hardware engineers who cracked open a Note 7 for a test recently, they've concluded that the phone's tendency to combust is due to a "fundamental problem with the design of the phone," and that Samsung sort of knew the "super aggressive" design was risky, but went with it anyway because it was trying so hard to innovate and gain a competitive edge.
In short, the phone's internals were so crammed in, the battery was continually being compressed. The pressure makes the "separator" of the positive and negative electrodes easily damaged. As you've probably read dozens of times already during the peak of the Note 7 incidents, when a battery's positive and negative bits come into contact, it generates heat continually to cause a thermal runway (aka fires).
A photo by Instrumental of the Note 7's internals highlights just how tight the battery was crammed in. Photo: Instrumental