Las Vegas -- The first order of business at Samsung’s CES 2017 press conference Wednesday was to address the ill-fated Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, which was discontinued in October 2016 after design faults caused handsets to explode.
Samsung Electronics President and COO, Tim Baxter spoke on the manufacturer’s plans to soon share the root cause report on the smartphone.
“Some of you were directly impacted and certainly many of you saw the media coverage surrounding the Galaxy Note 7,” Baxter said at the press conference. “We continue our intensive efforts internally and with third party experts to understand what happened and to make sure it does not happen again.”
Other third party investigators have already revealed their own reports on the Galaxy Note 7. The teardown publication Instrumental determined that the issue with the Galaxy Note 7 was a design flaw, in which the battery holding area was too small for the smartphone’s 3,500mAh cell. With no room to expand naturally within the chassis, the Galaxy Note 7 battery spontaneously combusted. According to Instrumental, if handset didn’t explode, it would have eventually broken apart from the inside out over time.
Pundits believe Samsung’s effort to bring new features, such as its iris scanning technology to market, weeks again of Apple’s iPhone 7 is what ultimately caused the downfall of the Galaxy Note 7. The device was announced Aug. 2, 2016, nearly two weeks earlier than the prior Galaxy Note 5.
Reports from Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal also suggested early on that Samsung’s speedy development process for the Galaxy Note 7 caused the manufacturer to overlook design flaws on the smartphone during testing.
While Samsung has been extremely apologetic to the public for any damage or inconvenience caused by the Galaxy Note 7, the manufacturer has reiterated its dedication bringing new features to the market.
“This year was a challenging year for Samsung,” Baxter said. “Despite our setbacks we have not and will not stop innovating.”
After a global recall, Samsung is now pushing out an end-of life update to Galaxy Note 7 handsets still on the market. T-Mobile has already rolled the software onto its model in the U.S., while AT&T and Verizon will send the update on Jan. 5 and Sprint on Jan. 8. Updates are also planned for Malaysia And Korea and have already hit in New Zealand, Australia and Canada.
