Finally, A credible explanation for the Note 7 disaster!

A Samsung user sharing his exploded Note 7 pictures. Courtesy: YouTube

Finally we know what was wrong with the Note 7 battery. The issue is simple if you think about it, but not at all intuitive. The sad demise of an otherwise impressive device with the recall of 2.5 million devices and losses more than $2 billion did put the world's largest manufacturer to investigate into the faults that it made.

In a packed press conference at its offices in southern Seoul Monday, Samsung apologized to its consumers for not ensuring the design specifications given to its suppliers were fail-safe.  The company believes that its investigation would help the entire industry to counter overheating risks with lithium batteries.

The batteries in the original unit as well as the replacement unit were from different manufacturers but coincidentally led to the same problem. That was quite saddening. The first had a design flaw. The external casing was too small for the components inside and causing short-circuit and ignition. The second had a manufacturing defect that ultimately led to the same result. In a rush to deploy the replacement unit, it caused the disaster yet again.

A message from Samsung

Kevin White, principal scientist for Exponent tried to justify by saying that though it did not inspect the battery units themselves, "the electronics did not contribute to the failure" of either batteries. The fact that the testing was left on the battery manufacturers was the critical issue. This event has prompted Samsung to include an "eight-point"  inspection test to ensure the safety of its future batteries.

DJ Koh, Samsung's chief of mobile.

"The tests we are to perform go well above and beyond the industry standard," Denison said.

One check is a durability test that examines the battery when it's been overcharged, punctured by a nail or exposed to extreme temperatures. Samsung will visually inspect each battery and do an X-ray test to check for abnormalities. It will put the batteries through a large-scale charging and discharging test, will simulate accelerated consumer usage scenarios, and will disassemble the batteries to inspect the overall quality. Other tests will look for leakage of the battery component and the complete device, or for any change in voltage through the manufacturing process.

Initially, Samsung said that this will not affect the Galaxy S8 launch, but the very inclusion of the inspection tests has delayed the S8 presentation. The device will no longer be announced at the MWC 2017. Still, it is rumored to go on sale in April.

With all this, the S8 will probably be much more fail safe than the previous offering, but it will be a hard game for Samsung to regain lost trust.