Samsung’s battery disaster and the effect on brand Samsung

Samsung’s battery disaster

Would brand Samsung ever recover from this battery disaster or is every PR got PR?

A Samsung phone mostly Galaxy Note 7s  that bursts into flames  comes with the scariness of uncertainty, hence why it has been banned in airplane cabins and mobile phone charging stations around public places.

Also it does not seem that either Samsung or the battery supplier knows the actual technicalities of the problem.

This uncertainty would damage the Samsung brand and cause consumer dissatisfaction, which makes it vital for the whole industry to identify and fix the problem as quickly as possible.

Inside source currently claims that the problem would cost Samsung over two billion in lost revenue over the next eight to ten months, on top of the costs of recalling millions of handsets.

This disaster can also act as a catalysis to improve battery safety across the industry. If Samsung made the damaged batteries available to researchers, it could look into why they went wrong. This would provide much-needed insight into how batteries and their manufacture could be improved.

Scientists and engineers in battery research, both in industry and academia, have a closely related problem. Research on battery safety is more important than ever but expensive. You can artificially introduce obstacles into a model production line, but then you are only investigating a self-created problem, which limits potential to learn new lessons.

The Note 7 recall could provide researchers with a huge batch of potentially faulty batteries which is very positive and it would help solution the problem much quicker

How and what is the problem with Samsung’s battery?

The Note 7 batteries in 2006 which has had a previous mass recall of faulty batteries by Sony was down to the presence of small meta left in the battery cells by the manufacturing process.

 As the battery was charged and discharged then under mechanical pressure, these particles led to the growth of little trees of metallic lithium known as dendrites in one of the electrodes.

Currently the Note 7 battery may have a similar problem. Today’s battery technology has moved on, packing more energy into the same space than in 2006.

How to improve battery manufacturing

All lithium ion batteries undergo the formation process after the mechanical manufacturing.

This involves charging and discharging them a fixed number of times in a way that forms  protective layers inside and allows any side-reaction to happen in a controlled way. 

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