After months of investigation, Samsung is blaming the design and manufacturing of its Note 7’s battery for the fires that led to an international recall.
A Samsung executive apologized again for the issue, even as the company blames its battery suppliers, and not Samsung’s design.
“I deeply apologize to our customers,” said President Samsung Mobile Dong-jin Koh.
The company says it may have asked too much of its battery suppliers – by building a much stronger battery while keeping the phone smaller.
“Samsung suffers from this problem. This tendency in Samsung for engineers to put a lot of features in the phone checklist for bosses,” explained Author Geoffrey Cain.
Since it began the recall last September, 700,000 researchers worked to replicate the problems using 200,000 devices and 30,000 batteries.
They concluded the battery’s outer casing was too small.
“It caused two parts of the battery to basically come into contact with each other, and short out. And that caused overheating,” explained CNET Senior Writer Dan Ackerman.
In the U.S. Samsung received 13 reports of burns and 47 reports of property damage associated with Note7 phones. And a total of 96 reports of overheating batteries.
Since the recall, Samsung announced an eight-point safety check on all its phones.
Worldwide, about 120,000 of the potentially dangerous Note 7’s are still in circulation.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is doing its own investigation.
