When it comes to your smartphones, many of you would probably trade a few fractions of a millimeter in overall thickness for a bigger battery. Apparently, that’s something Samsung should’ve strongly considered with the Galaxy Note 7.
According to a report from the engineers at Instrumental Technology (who supplied the image above), Samsung got a little too aggressive with the design of the Note 7. They shaved down the gaps around the Note’s sizable battery to dangerously thin margins. That, Instrumental believes, is ultimately what caused numerous Note 7s to explode.
It’s perfectly normal for “jelly roll” lithium-ion batteries like the ones Samsung used to swell during use. Engineers and designers take that into account when they’re cooking up a new product. Instrumental notes that the Note 7’s battery “sits within a CNC-machined pocket,” which should have afforded it protection from other internal components.
With expansion gaps ranging from .1 to .5mm, though, Instrumental says that Samsung pushed the balance between safety and capacity too far. On the device that they disassembled, Instrumental actually didn’t even see a measurable gap, and they believe the battery may have already been under stress.
They also believe that’s what led Samsung to scrap the Note 7 completely rather than, say, retrofitting a different battery.
Samsung, you may recall, offered a different explanation for why so many Galaxy Note 7s were exploding. President Koh Dong-jin blamed a “tiny manufacturing error” in the batteries that made them more likely to overheat and burst.
Whichever explanation is true, the flawed Note 7 ended up burning a $5 to $8 billion hole in Samsung’s corporate pocket.
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