In a year of big tech stories, undoubtedly one of the fieriest tales of 2016 was how Samsung simply couldn't figure out why their Note 7 flagship phones kept imploding. Months and months of work by hundreds of engineers has yielded little, although now Reuters is reporting that an internal Samsung investigation has finally concluded that the Galaxy Note 7's flaws weren't related to hardware or software, but rather by the batteries.

Samsung were using several battery suppliers for the Note 7, so this is an odd conclusion to make, since it's unlikely that all of the manufacturers independently made errors in their construction.

Officially Samsung hasn't issued a report yet, and instead this information was provided to Reuters by 'a person familiar with the matter. '

It is expected that an official Samsung report will be released on the 23rd of January, when the Korean behemoth will also be expected to explain how they will prevent similar occurences on the upcoming Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8.

Originally as our readers probably know, Samsung recalled the Note 7 in September 2016, offering replacement models. The replacement models also caught on fire, signalling that Samsung actually never really fixed the problem. All of their engineers weren't able to track the root of the problem, even though they could recreate the fires in testing.

Overall, a total of 2. 5 million units were recalled, and all production was halted. According to Engadget, this cost Samsung over $36 million USD in market value.

Such a blunder might have destroyed a smaller competitor, but Samsung were able to weather the storm, and hopefully won't repeat any errors again in their future models. After customer confidence was severely dented by the Note 7, any subsequent explosions will surely mark the end of Samsung's smartphone project.

2017-1-17 03:00