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Samsung says short-circuiting batteries caused Galaxy Note 7 fires

Monday, 23 Jan 2017 09:54:54 | Thuy Ong

A photo of two Samsung Galaxy7 smartphones. (Supplied: Samsung)

Samsung Electronics has found internal short circuiting in Galaxy Note 7 batteries caused the phones to heat up and catch on fire.

The Note 7 launched globally on August 19 but, shortly after, users reported the batteries catching on fire, and Samsung announced a global product replacement program to swap the problematic batteries.

However, the problems continued and the device was discontinued globally on October 11.

In a press conference at its headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, the president of Samsung's mobile communications business, DJ Koh, apologised to customers, retailers and business partners, saying the company had "invested all efforts and substantial resources to analyse every aspect [of the failure] in order to fully investigate the causes".

"Devices and batteries were repeatedly charged and discharged, simulating incidents in the field," Mr Koh told reporters.

"This indicated that incidents were caused by the battery cell itself and we proceeded to focus our investigation on our batteries."

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From positive reviews to fire hazard: here are the key developments in Samsung's Note7 nightmare.

Samsung said 96 per cent of 3 million devices sold and activated globally had been returned.

Samsung conducted an internal review and sought independent reviews from UL, a safety science organisation, Exponent, a US-based consulting and engineering firm and TuvRheinland, a German-based company.

UL president of consumer business, Sajeev Jesudas, said the organisation had found assembly and manufacturing issues on the batteries in the first release of Note 7s, and product quality issues in batteries in the global replacement program.

"The higher energy density of the batteries in general could increase the severity of a battery failure," Mr Jesudas said.

"Design and manufacturing issues with the batteries led to field failures of the Note 7 devices."

Samsung is due to report its full-year earnings tomorrow.

More to come.

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