So what made these Samsung batteries so different? Were they trying to require too much power from too small a package? Is the ultimate responsibility the battery manufacturer? Was that also Samsung?

 

So what made these Samsung batteries so different?

when you are in the business of pushing envelopes, you inevitably push it too much.

 

One would think a company that size could afford competent managers.

Time was probably the temptation.

 

About time for a UL 2272 for cell phones and electronic cigs?

 

My guess -and this is only a guess- is that Samsung, locked in a mortal battle with Apple, rushed the release of the Galaxy Note 7 in order to beat the Iphone 7.

 

Samsung did validate the batteries and not an independent lab. They did the testing in-house.

 

Hello,

I'll submit a guess that it is not the battery, although they may claim that anyway. I would guess that it is either a connector or something else on the board like the connector to the SD card, but i guess it could be something else that is partially shorting two or more contacts.
They may claim it is the battery because the battery did not detect a fault, but the fault itself i am guessing is the main cause and that is either one of the connectors or something else causing a partial short. I'd say 75 percent confidence.

Am also guessing with more confidence that it gets VERY hot before exploding, however i have more confidence in this guess, like 99 percent. That means something COULD have detected the high heat and turned something off to prevent a very bad and dangerous failure.

I think all Li-ion or similar batteries should have some sort of temperature detection.

 

Lipo are very dangerous to power any device or any use . Hence why most R/C companies recommend charging in a fireproof bag .. Trying to find the real problem would be almost impossible with proper testing..The issues could have been the protection board or poorly made lipos or any number of reason.. But this is more of a reminder how dangerous these batteries can be.

 

The cause is still unknown, at least outside of Samsung.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fatal-mistake-that-doomed-samsungs-galaxy-note-1477248978

 

Hi,

Guy in Austrailia reported his iPhone7 caught on fire now too.
This is interesting.

What i would like to know is if all these phones that caught fire had an SD card plugged in at the time. Not sure how to find out this information though.

 

Hello,

I'll submit a guess that it is not the battery, although they may claim that anyway. I would guess that it is either a connector or something else on the board like the connector to the SD card, but i guess it could be something else that is partially shorting two or more contacts.
They may claim it is the battery because the battery did not detect a fault, but the fault itself i am guessing is the main cause and that is either one of the connectors or something else causing a partial short. I'd say 75 percent confidence.

Am also guessing with more confidence that it gets VERY hot before exploding, however i have more confidence in this guess, like 99 percent. That means something COULD have detected the high heat and turned something off to prevent a very bad and dangerous failure.

I think all Li-ion or similar batteries should have some sort of temperature detection.

if the safety circuitry inside the battery fails the fault is with the battery, isn't it? Bad circuitry in the phone could overheat the battery but the circuitry in the battery should have shut the battery don.
From the reports the point of failure is not in the phone but in the battery itself.
Does anybody have a Galaxy Note 7? Who makes the battery

The "rush to market" seems to make sense.

 

if the safety circuitry inside the battery fails the fault is with the battery, isn't it? Bad circuitry in the phone could overheat the battery but the circuitry in the battery should have shut the battery don.
From the reports the point of failure is not in the phone but in the battery itself.
Does anybody have a Galaxy Note 7? Who makes the battery

The "rush to market" seems to make sense.

Hi there,

Not necessarily. If the battery failed to detect the fault and disconnect, then it could be in the battery OR in the phone itself.
So there are two scenarios and i'll give my guess on which one based on some recent facts:
1. The battery failed internally and that included the fault detection circuitry inside the battery itself and the phone itself is fine.
2. The phone failed first, then the battery failed to detect the fault for some unknown reason possibly because fo the kind of fault.

So it's either the phone and the battery or just the battery.

I was thinking #2 because of the following reasons:
1. I had read that they already tried a different type of battery in order to solve the problem and those phones blew up too. What are the chances that two different battery makes would fail the same way.
2. Samsung decided to scrap the WHOLE phone, not just the battery, after this second battery failure. That means they loose billions and will never allow that model phone to be sold again as far as they know.
3. That model was in competition with the iPhone7 so they really really wanted it to work out well, yet they pulled the plug on the phone itself not just the battery.
4. Although not as strongly suggestive, there has been an iPhone7 explosion now too and that was apparently for no reason at all also.

These things suggest that it is the phone, and i would not doubt if this becomes more widespread in other phones. Of course i dont have one in front of me to test, so i cant be 100 percent certain, but i think within reason it is the fault mainly of the phone. What we dont know is how the battery could be affected because some of these batteries are much more sophisticated than in the past where they may communicate with the phone over a 1 wire connection. We'd have to know a lot more about that battery to understand what may have happend, why the battery didnt catch the fault. It could be that these batteries are only made in a few different factories, but according to what i read Samsung went for a different manufacturer. Whether or not they ended up with the same manu anyway i dont know.

I think we have to wait for more cases to come in and see what everyone does about it. It will probably take a brave soul to test theirs without sending it back

 

Do Apple and Samsung both try to keep battery size down, perhaps for safety? The one thing that almost every customer wants is more battery. The suppliers refuse to meet this demand and instead shave off millimeters of thickness, forcing us all to replace those millimeters by buying ugly cases to protect our skinny phones.

I would much rather have a phone 3mm thicker with a massive battery.

But not if that puts a fire bomb in my pocket.

 

Anybody for LI Whiskers? I think that was Boeing's problem.

 

Hi there,

Not necessarily. If the battery failed to detect the fault and disconnect, then it could be in the battery OR in the phone itself.
So there are two scenarios and i'll give my guess on which one based on some recent facts:
1. The battery failed internally and that included the fault detection circuitry inside the battery itself and the phone itself is fine.
2. The phone failed first, then the battery failed to detect the fault for some unknown reason possibly because fo the kind of fault.

So it's either the phone and the battery or just the battery.

I was thinking #2 because of the following reasons:
1. I had read that they already tried a different type of battery in order to solve the problem and those phones blew up too. What are the chances that two different battery makes would fail the same way.
2. Samsung decided to scrap the WHOLE phone, not just the battery, after this second battery failure. That means they loose billions and will never allow that model phone to be sold again as far as they know.
3. That model was in competition with the iPhone7 so they really really wanted it to work out well, yet they pulled the plug on the phone itself not just the battery.
4. Although not as strongly suggestive, there has been an iPhone7 explosion now too and that was apparently for no reason at all also.

These things suggest that it is the phone, and i would not doubt if this becomes more widespread in other phones. Of course i dont have one in front of me to test, so i cant be 100 percent certain, but i think within reason it is the fault mainly of the phone. What we dont know is how the battery could be affected because some of these batteries are much more sophisticated than in the past where they may communicate with the phone over a 1 wire connection. We'd have to know a lot more about that battery to understand what may have happend, why the battery didnt catch the fault. It could be that these batteries are only made in a few different factories, but according to what i read Samsung went for a different manufacturer. Whether or not they ended up with the same manu anyway i dont know.

I think we have to wait for more cases to come in and see what everyone does about it. It will probably take a brave soul to test theirs without sending it back

What are the chances two batteries MADE TO THE SAME SPECIFICATIONS will fail the same way? Pretty good I would say.

 

Lithium-ion battery in your robot?

https://www.wired.com/2016/10/samsu...n-problems-just-ask-nasa/?mbid=social_twitter

This was surprising, we have Class D extinguishers just for Metal Hydride fires.

After the initial battery burst, an intern from the next lab over climbed through a window and sprayed RoboSimian with a CO2 fire extinguisher. But the fire persisted—he needed water to quench this combustion, despite NASA’s safety protocol, which called for a Class D extinguisher (no such extinguisher was around, anyway).

 

Lithium-ion battery in your robot?

Yikes! Good idea to not let these on planes.