![]() Samsung said it explored any potential problems involving system software, manufacturing, and Note 7 hardware during its months-long investigation. It’s the only mainstream battery chemistry that uses a flammable substance as an electrolyte, so while it’s more efficient than battery technologies with water-based electrolytes, such as nickel-cadmium and nickel-metal hydride, it also presents a greater fire risk.īut every smartphone has a lithium-ion battery inside it, and the Note 7 presented wildcards that stoked speculation. Whitacre says that Lithium-ion’s efficiency comes at a price. “Lithium-ion batteries are two- to ten-times more energy-dense than other battery technologies, and getting more use time without having a huge phone is a big deal.”įor smartphone users, that energy density helps give tiny devices long battery life the Note 7's 3,500mAh battery was built to get through a full day. ![]() “It's all about size,” says Jay Whitacre, who researches materials science and engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. And now that our devices are ever slimmer, more powerful, and more important for a full day’s communication, it may exacerbate the danger. It even happened on an airplane when a replacement device was unplugged and powered off, in cooperation with FAA instructions.īut the Note 7 debacle shows that any lithium-ion battery, including those made or sourced by big-name companies, aren’t immune. You could tell if your phone had the safer battery inside it if the battery meter was green instead of white.īut then those “safer” replacement phones started overheating and catching fire. Just trade in your fancy new Note 7, and they’d replace it with a new phone powered by the safer battery. Samsung had purportedly pinpointed the cause of the problem: It had used two sources for the Note 7 batteries, and the ones made by Samsung’s own component division seemed to be faulty. ![]() The first fix seemed straightforward-if annoying-to early Note 7 buyers. By the time the US Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a formal nationwide recall two weeks later, nearly 100 dangerous battery incidents had been reported in the United States. In September, weeks after the Note 7 launched, Samsung issued an initial recall of 2.5 million devices after several phones experienced overheating issues. As far as smartphone battery sagas go, this one was packed with twists, turns, and then a whole lot of silence.
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