Galaxy Note 7 Teardown Blames Battery Issues On Aggressive Design Decisions

A teardown of the Galaxy Note 7 may be shedding some new light on the phone's battery issues. By now, those issues are well known, as exploding Note 7s were the cause of two recalls and Samsung's decision to cancel the production and sale of the handset altogether. We still don't have an official reason for the faulty batteries, but a new teardown from Instrumental suggests that aggressive design decisions are to blame.Early reports of Samsung's own investigation claimed that the cause was found in the battery itself. This initial investigation apparently found that a manufacturing flaw caused the positive and negative plates within the battery to touch, which produced extra heat and in some cases caused ignition.

Instrumental's teardown found that contact between these positive and negative layers is likely to blame, but also that these layers don't necessarily touch because of a flaw in the battery. Instead, the explosions are blamed on the slim design of the Galaxy Note 7. Instrumental says that there isn't enough extra space to allow for the battery to swell – which is something that happens with normal use.

Where many engineers give phone batteries a ceiling of around 10% to accommodate this swelling, the Galaxy Note 7 had nothing. So, when the battery began to swell or pressure was applied via the back panel of the phone, that pressure would be transferred to the battery. Add to that polymer separator layers within the battery that were already thin to begin with, and you have even more potential for the positive and negative plates to touch and ignite.

The problem stems from Samsung's drive to be competitive. Samsung packed the Galaxy Note 7 with a lot of powerful hardware, and in the process of designing a phone that could aesthetically compete with other devices, didn't leave enough room for the battery. Opting for a larger phone or a smaller battery would have solved the issue, but it also would have taken away an important competitive edge for the Galaxy Note 7.

In short, Instrumental's report says that Samsung took a gamble and ultimately paid the price for it. Perhaps the most damning thing about the report is the claim that these design decisions were intentional and not just an oversight. If there's an argument to be made against this race to produce the thinnest phone, it would seem that the Galaxy Note 7 is the perfect post child for it.

SOURCE: Instrumental