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Technology | Technology

The KING is dead. The demise of the Samsung Galaxy Note7

The KING is dead.

Samsung has officially halted production of its Galaxy Note7.What can I say, Samsung really blew it with this one... LITERALLY! A few months ago, the Note7 was released, touted as the best smartphone of the year on most tech blogs, and rightly so because on paper, it was King. Everything you could want in a phone, sans the IR blaster and the removable battery (I will be coming to that shortly), it even had an IRIS scanner for an added level of security.

So what could possibly have gone wrong?

Well, science happened.

 

I remember when the Note 5 was launched, I went on a rant about the lack of a removable battery and a Micro SD slot.

Samsung, you see now why removable batteries would've been a good thing? All you would have had to do was replace batteries instead of replacing phones, but yeah, here I am in my Ghana... nobody knows me so my opinion really doesn't matter.

Ok... now let me explain the science behind the Note7 exploding. In short, Lithium-Ion. Yep, those little buggers inside your phone... the ones we call batteries, yeah those things... they contain Lithium-Ion.

 Image result for li ion battery samsung

Before Lithium Ion (Li-Ion), the older cell phones used Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) which were safer but had a not-so-great cycle life, were heavier and larger; and in this era of anorexic smartphones, big and heavy are not exactly the kind of words you will want to use in today's smartphone maker's boardroom.

Now, back to Li-Ion... lithium-ion cells can be charged and discharged more rapidly, it doesn't have as much of a "memory effect," which occurs when a battery is recharged before it is fully empty, causing a battery's capacity to diminish.

So Li-Ion batteries are especially popular in devices such as laptops and phones because they store energy super efficiently, are lighter and smaller and are slow to lose their charge. Here's the thing, some Li-Ion batteries don't last long in extreme temperatures, particularly in very hot climates.

The technology is that fragile, it requires a protection circuit to assure safety. The protection circuit limits the peak voltage of each cell during charge and prevents the cell voltage from dropping too low on discharge. In addition, the cell temperature is monitored to prevent temperature extremes.

 

How do they work?

Like pretty much all batteries, lithium ion batteries work by storing energy and releasing it through controlled chemical reactions. A lithium ion battery has two electrodes (where electricity can enter or leave the battery) on opposite sides. One electrode, called the anode, is filled with negatively charged ions. The other electrode, called a cathode, contains positively charged ions and lithium. Remember the plus (+) and minus (-) signs you see on your remote control batteries? You can think of the anode and the cathodes like those plus and minus signs.

battery plus and minus

When you use a battery, the lithium moves over from the cathode (positive side) to the anode (negative side) - and when you charge it, the lithium moves back over to the cathode. There's a separator inside that keeps the anode and the cathode from touching because that can trigger mishaps such as fires and explosions.

 

So, what can cause the explosions?

The reason you can shove so much power into lithium ion batteries is that lithium basically, according to Stephen Hackney, a professor of materials science and engineering at Michigan Tech University, "wants to react to almost anything" - which can lead to explosive results.But one of the most common reasons the batteries can explode is because of mistakes in the charging process, he said. Inside the devices that rely on the batteries there is software that tells them exactly how much the batteries should be charged and how fast. If those protocols are set incorrectly, it can destabilize some chemicals inside the battery and cause a chain reaction that researchers call a "thermal runaway" that may lead to fire or explosions.

Overheating can also cause explosions, which is why your phone probably pops up with an alert about needing to cool down when it gets too hot. Let me suppose everyone reading this has ever encountered a bloated battery. The most common cause of this bloating is when a rechargeable battery is overcharged and therefore exposed to too much heat. if you touch a battery charger right after use, you will notice it is warm. The electric charge causes heat which can break the outer shell of Lithium-based batteries, such as Li-Ion, which once again, are extremely susceptible to overheating due to overcharging. Another reason could be shoddy manufacturing or rough user treatment. If unwanted materials, like scraps of metal, accidentally end up inside the battery when it's being made, they can short a cell of the battery and set off a thermal runaway.

So could dropping a device; if the impact causes a break in the separator between the anode and cathode, boom!

 

Now you understand why terrorists use cell phones as bomb triggers.

 

What happened with the Galaxy Note 7?

Possibly, a manufacturing problem. Samsung reported on its UK website that at least 35 cases where the batteries combusted, were due to "a very rare manufacturing process error" in which the anode and cathode touched. The company decided to temporarily pull the phone off the market just two weeks after it was released and is offering replacements to people who already purchased the device.

How often do these types of problems occur?

The good news, according to Hackney, is they're pretty uncommon, especially among high-end devices, when manufacturers keep a close eye on production quality. But there have been plenty of high-profile cases.

For instance, back in 2006, Dell recalled more than 4 million laptop battery packs over combustion issues.

In 2013, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner was grounded by the FAA after reports of fires related to the lithium-ion batteries used in the planes. And half a million hoverboards, one of the hottest toys from last year got too hot and ended up being recalled because of lithium ion battery explosions.

There was even a case of a Tesla Model S battery exploding.

In short, this could happen to any device that uses Li-Ion batteries if a keen eye is not kept on the production of these batteries and also if they're not subject to rigorous tests.

The usual question that follows: "Didn't Samsung test the device before releasing it to the market?"

Yes, they did. But as has been mentioned in all the news stories, the number of recorded cases are about 70. This is out of 2.5 million Note7 devices produced. So such a mission would be akin to the proverbial "looking for a needle in a haystack".

My advice to Samsung, #BringBackRemovableBatteries.

 

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DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.