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Well, after months of speculation, Samsung has finally announced the results of its Galaxy Note 7 investigation. The official line: those fires were caused by two distinct battery flaws (just as a recent report suggested), not a hardware or software issue. The first flaw had to do with how the Note 7's original batteries were manufactured: their casings were too small to fit the electrode assembly inside, which could lead to short-circuiting.
Samsung's suppliers moved to replace those batteries with safer versions, but in their haste, a completely different production flaw was introduced. Welding defects inside the batteries made those supposedly safe replacements prone to short-circuiting and bursting into flames as well.
Samsung Mobile chief DJ Koh said he "deeply" apologized to customers for the company's failures, and added that researchers worked to rule out wired and wireless charging, the phone's USB Type-C port and the iris-scanning feature as potential causes. In its bid to conclusively determine what happened to the Galaxy Note 7, Samsung also built a stand-alone testing lab, which it was all too eager to share photos of.
Gallery: Samsung Battery Testing QA | 6 Photos
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+2With that admission, Samsung hopes to put one of its most notable -- not to mention most public -- failures behind it. The next part of the company's plan is to (hopefully) dazzle would-be customers with next-generation flagship hardware, which will most likely be unveiled at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month. Early rumors suggest that the Galaxy S8 will pack an AI assistant that came to Samsung by way of an acquisition, and that there might be a larger version of the S8 meant in some way to replace the Note line.
It's still unclear how the events of the past few months will affect sales of Samsung's new flagship devices, but the company hasn't been hurting too badly as a result so far. While Samsung Mobile saw its operating profit tank in the wake of the Note 7 recalls, a recent Reuters piece suggests the whole of Samsung Electronics will actually report record profits this Tuesday thanks to strong chip sales.
This is a developing story, please stay tuned for more.