Samsung explodes. Smartphone grenades: why gadgets explode and how to avoid it. Samsung's losses after shipment cancellations
MOSCOW, September 2 – RIA Novosti. Last Wednesday, Samsung announced it was suspending sales of its latest phablet, the Galaxy Note 7, which hit shelves in 10 countries on August 19. The main reason, for which the president of the mobile division, Dong Jin Koh, has already apologized, is battery explosions during charging.
Samsung may recall all of its Galaxy Note 7s due to battery problemsSamsung is expected to announce the results of its investigation into the cause of the battery problems, as well as a series of comprehensive measures to address the issue, either this weekend or early next week.Be that as it may, this scourge has plagued lithium-ion batteries for the third decade. And since April of this year, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) even introduced a temporary ban on the carriage of Li-ion batteries on passenger flights if they are not installed in any device.
The essence of the problem
The lithium-ion battery, despite all its advantages, is a very capricious element. Its charging takes place according to a complex algorithm and is always controlled by a special microcontroller that constantly monitors the temperature and other parameters of the battery. A lot of restrictions are also imposed on its operation and storage. Such batteries do not tolerate deep discharge, operation at low temperatures and heating. Therefore, almost all devices with them have special controllers that monitor their operation and turn off the battery if its indicators exceed critical values.
However, making a lithium-ion battery safe is not that difficult. However, modern trends towards reducing the size of batteries and their shapes, as well as experiments with chemical composition, each time return developers to their original positions. The main problem is overheating of individual battery cells due to increased temperature or a short circuit inside the cell. An overheating cell can start a chain reaction. And taking into account the fact that the alkaline metal lithium included in batteries is flammable, the consequences can be very sad: sudden swelling, fire or even explosion.
But if controllers monitor the battery at every step, why do they explode? There may be several reasons.
Among the main ones is a manufacturing defect, in which the insulator layer between the cells turns out to be insufficiently thick.
Shocks or physical damage to the battery, as well as simple overheating, are also dangerous. For example, if the battery has received minor damage from a fall from a small height, the user may not notice it, but the condition of the battery may deteriorate. It can fail without even reaching its temperature limit.
The problem can be solved by stricter regulation. But this will lead to higher prices for all products and a slowdown in the introduction of new technologies. Which, in conditions of constant competition, companies simply won’t do. Therefore, consumers will have to come to terms with the fact that isolated cases of fires may continue to occur with products from the most famous brands, such as Apple, Samsung and any others.
However, at the beginning of this year, American physicists from Stanford announced the development of a special fuse for batteries. It consists of nickel nanoparticles embedded in a thin sheet of plastic and graphene and automatically turns off the battery without waiting for the controller to react. Despite its apparent simplicity, the implementation of this development remains questionable, since it will not save batteries in one hundred percent of cases, but will lead to an increase in its cost.
01.09.2016, Thu, 15:20, Moscow time , Text: Valeria Shmyrova
Samsung has suspended deliveries of its new flagship Galaxy Note 7 to the South Korean market. This decision is associated with cases of battery fires during charging, one of which was recorded in this country. Samsung shares immediately fell in price by $7 billion.Samsung interrupts shipments of Galaxy Note 7 in South Korea
Samsung has interrupted shipments of the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone to South Korea's three major mobile carriers to conduct several additional quality control tests. The company does not specify why the tests were required.
Reuters links the supply stoppage to cases in which the battery of a smartphone that went on sale late last month exploded due to overheating. At the same time, Galaxy Note 7 users on forums and social networks complain about other problems with the device.
Galaxy Note 7 battery explosion cases
The first case of a Galaxy Note 7 battery explosion was reported in China about a week ago. User with the nickname Mr. Ni 666666 posted a photo of the melted device on a local Baidu forum. According to him, the smartphone caught fire when it was connected to an electrical outlet using a charger.
Galaxy Note 7 burned while charging in China
According to Business Korea, on August 30, 2016, a similar incident occurred in South Korea. Photos of another melted Galaxy Note 7 appeared on the popular Korean social network Kakao Story. According to the owner of the smartphone, it also exploded while charging. Samsung has seized the damaged phones from customers to investigate.
Samsung's losses after shipment cancellations
The company announced the supply disruption on the evening of August 31, 2016. According to Reuters, the decision has already cost Samsung $7 billion in its market value due to an immediate 2% drop in shares. According to Park Jung-hoon, manager of the consulting company HDC Asset Management, Samsung's profit for July-September 2016 will fall by at least $180 million.
Galaxy Note 7 that exploded in South Korea
Samsung subsidiary SDI, which supplies batteries for the Galaxy Note 7, said it had not received any information from Samsung about problems with this model. However, after the supply disruption was reported, the company's shares fell 6.1%.
In early August, Hyundai Securities, which specializes in providing financial services, expressed confidence that Samsung would be able to sell about 12 million Galaxy Note 7 before the end of 2016. According to the firm's analyst Kim Dong-won, Galaxy Note 7 was supposed to divert buyers' attention from the iPhone 7, the release of which is scheduled for September 7.
The average price of the Galaxy Note 7 in South Korea is $882. According to Samsung, demand for the new model in this market exceeded supply even before sales began. The South Korean press, citing a source at Samsung, reports that the company plans to soon recall those Galaxy Note 7 that have any problems with the battery. The company will not return money or exchange the smartphone for a new one, but will only replace the battery for free.
The Korean company Samsung has epically disgraced itself with the new flagship smartphone Galaxy Note 7: all the efforts of the developers seem to have been thrown into abandoning the name Note 6 (this is the sixth generation), and drawing a seven so that the number would be no less than the expected September 7 iPhone 7. But it was not possible to design a smartphone so that it would not explode while charging.
History of the problem
History developed rapidly. In August, 35 smartphones exploded in countries where the Note 7 went on sale earlier than others.
On August 30, the company suspended accepting pre-orders for Note 7, explaining this by high demand, but accidentally made a mistake on the numbers. The fact is that at first Samsung cheerfully reported 7,500 Russian pre-orders in the first week, and three weeks later - about 9,000, that is, five times less were ordered in two weeks. In other countries, pre-orders were also suspended.
On September 1, it became known that sales of Note 7 had ceased in 10 countries and rumors appeared about a large-scale recall campaign: almost all devices sold would be replaced.
On September 2, Samsung officially announced the recall of all smartphones sold. Anyone who ordered a device with prepayment (about 900 people in Russia) can get a full refund.
Why do batteries explode?
All this time, information was released through a number of media outlets that smartphones explode only when using a non-original charger or a non-original cable - this, however, is talk in favor of the poor, because the original device with a cable is usually at home, and in the car, at work and friends use whatever they like. And then, what does “unoriginal” mean? Samsung does not produce chargers and cables itself, but orders them externally. If a cable or charger produced at the same factory says, say, not Samsung, but Sony, is it immediately counterfeit? Actually, that’s why manufacturers once agreed to use a standard USB connector so that the chargers would be universal.
Moreover, they are all standard: regular charging produces a voltage of 5V and a current of up to 2A. The current strength at a particular moment in time is determined by the charge controller included in the smartphone chipset. Moreover, a lithium-ion battery usually also has its own controller, which protects the “can” itself, firstly, from overcharging, and secondly, from deep discharge - both are detrimental to a lithium-ion battery. Fast charging uses higher voltage (9 V, 2 A or 9 V, 1.67 A or in some cases 12 V). It is the voltage that is increased, not the current (otherwise a much thicker wire will be required). At the same time, in order not to burn out a regular phone with fast charging, data is exchanged between the charger itself and the phone: roughly speaking, it sends a request: “Do you support fast charging?” - and if it receives a “yes” answer, it turns on the increased voltage , and the controller is already charging the battery with a high current.
In the case of Note 7, for some reason, the charging controller in the smartphone first failed, after which too much charging current was supplied to the battery. At the same time, in the exploded batteries (all cases of explosions are associated with devices from early batches), as they say, there was no built-in controller. Charging with too much current leads to overheating of the battery, which triggers a chain reaction: the electrolyte boils with the release of a large amount of gas, the pressure inside the sealed battery case increases several times in a split second, after which the case explodes and hot gases under pressure escape outside, and parts of the structure batteries or the phone itself are turned into destructive elements - a kind of high-explosive fragmentation bomb is obtained.
Why is a battery explosion dangerous?
An explosion of a lithium battery is extremely dangerous. Firstly, lithium burns at a temperature of 1339 degrees - this is enough even to burn through concrete, and during the explosion, fire drops can be sprayed in different directions, which leads to serious fires and burns.
Secondly, an explosion can occur while talking on the phone: in this case, severe injuries and death are possible. For example, in 2007, fragments of an exploding Motorola phone pierced a Chinese man’s heart, and in the same year, an exploding LG phone tore a Korean man’s lungs and broke his spine, which also led to the death of the victim. There are also known cases of death from rupture of the cervical artery, irreparable loss of limbs, etc.
How to protect yourself from a phone explosion
Lithium battery explosions are the downside of technological progress; giving up on them is like giving up on planes, because they sometimes crash, and going to Vladivostok from Moscow by train.
However, the risk of suffering from an explosion will be much lower if you carry a smartphone in your bag, talk on it through a wireless headset, and display important messages on a smart watch. Headsets and watches, however, also have lithium batteries, but with 10-20 times less capacity than in smartphones. Therefore, even if something happens to them, the consequences will not be fatal.
What happened to the Samsung flagship?
A Korean cafe employee tries to put out a smartphone that caught fire.
Samsung Note 7 was supposed to be the main competitor to the iPhone 7. The media raved about the design, camera and stylus operation. It was even presented a month earlier than the new iPhone and released several weeks before Apple’s presentation - Samsung believed that this would help take market share from its competitor. But in the very first week after its release, reports of batteries catching fire began to appear. At the beginning of September, the company decided to recall the devices, and at the end of the month it re-released the Note 7 with a “safe” battery.
But reports of fires continued to arrive. On October 11, Samsung asked stores around the world to sell Note 7, and owners to sell the device and not use it anymore. They can now exchange the Note 7 for another Galaxy model (paying the difference) or get their money back. In Russia, return conditions are clarified by calling the hotline.
How often have phones actually exploded?
Before the recall began, Samsung managed to sell about 2.5 million devices (excluding China), but the battery defect, according to the company, was only 0.1%. That is, the battery could burn out in about 2.5 thousand Note 7. The exact number of fire cases is unknown, but there are definitely more than a hundred of them: as of mid-September, one was known in the USA, in Australia, in Korea and one in Taiwan. But new messages are still popping up.
From the descriptions of the incidents, it is impossible to understand in what cases the smartphone starts to burn. In Florida Note 7 set fire a jeep when it was charging from the cigarette lighter, in Australia the device was almost a room in a hotel - also while charging, in South Carolina a garage burned down completely because of it, a switched off Note 7 started smoking in the breast pocket on a plane flying to Baltimore, in Connecticut a smartphone practically in the hands of a teenager (he suffered minor burns), and in Kentucky, an unplugged Note 7 in his bedroom at night.
What causes the phone to light up in the first place?
The fact is that a smartphone battery is compressed from many layers of electrical conductors. Each layer has a cathode with positively charged ions and an anode with negatively charged ions. On the cathode side there are lithium ions: when the battery is charged, they move from the cathode to the anode, and back again when the battery is used. Between the cathode and the anode there is a thin dielectric plate that does not conduct electric current and prevents the cathode from reacting with the anode.
If the partition between them is destroyed, then the ions will follow a short path - a short circuit will occur. Then a chain reaction will begin: the battery will heat itself up even more, and the electrolyte will release flammable gas. When the reaction gains access to oxygen, a fire or even an explosion will occur. This is the general principle of the process, you can learn more about it.
Why are batteries so vulnerable?
In modern batteries, the thickness of the dielectric is only 20–25 micrometers, which is about three times thinner than a regular sheet of office paper. Firstly, this thin layer can collapse due to external pressure. For example, if you sit on your smartphone, bend it or hit it hard. After the dielectric is destroyed, the cathode and anode will react. The dielectric can also fail due to metal dust left inside after assembly.
The second reason for a short circuit is temperature. Lithium-ion batteries are not designed to operate in cold or hot weather. Due to overheating, the lithium metal in the battery grows into needle-like structures (dendrites), which can destroy the dielectric and create a short circuit.
There are many other reasons for heating: a smartphone is charging in the sun, a third-party charger does not know when to stop supplying current, the chip that turns off charging after 100% does not work, the battery has poor heat dissipation. Lithium-ion batteries have operating temperatures: they charge normally at temperatures from zero to 45 degrees, and operate at temperatures from -20 to 60 degrees. If the temperature is higher or lower, problems begin, and at 100 degrees there are very serious problems.
Why did this happen with the Note 7?
GTA V even has an addition in the form of a new Note 7 weapon capable of destroying opponents
Samsung said the batteries were burning due to a short circuit. Exactly why it happened will be determined by an internal investigation. Employees of the company said that the smartphone was prepared in a hurry in order to make it before the Apple presentation: the start date of sales was moved 10 days earlier, engineers constantly changed specifications and ordered new components, and employees had to sleep at work.
Lithium-ion batteries are considered not the most efficient for modern smartphones. Every year, devices appear with more powerful processors and brighter screens, but there are no fundamental changes in batteries. Manufacturers only have to pack the layers of conductors denser to get more capacity in a thinner package. The Note 7 battery was quite capacious - 3500 milliamp-hours. For comparison, the Note 6 has a 3,000 milliamp-hour battery, while the iPhone 7 has a 2,900 milliamp-hour battery. It's possible that the batteries were unevenly pressurized during the complex manufacturing process, causing them to charge unevenly as well.
What will happen to Samsung?
On the day sales were stopped, the company's shares dropped by 8%, and capitalization decreased by $17 billion. For comparison, in the fourth quarter of 2015 the company had operating income of $5.4 billion. It is unknown how much money Samsung will lose on returning devices.
Do smartphones from other manufacturers burn?
A battery defect is considered rare but dangerous. If defective batteries are put on sale, it only takes a few fire episodes for the company to recall the entire lot. In 2006, Dell and Apple sold about 6 million laptops with Sony batteries because some of them could catch fire. Although the probability of a defect was much lower than in the case of Note 7: 1 in 200,000 instead of 1 in 1000.
Phones have been on fire before. In 2002, a device of an unknown brand wore pants when I sat down on my iPhone 5c. And a student from New Jersey's iPhone 6s caught fire in his shirt pocket, even though it was turned off. A month ago, a construction worker from Ohio suffered serious burns to his leg when his Galaxy S7 Edge began to burn in his pocket, and a few days ago, a young man from Zhengzhou suffered burns and scratches when an iPhone 7 shattered in his hands while filming a video.
What should you do to prevent your smartphone from exploding?
Do not charge your smartphone in hot or sub-zero temperatures. Do not use cables or chargers from other smartphones or third-party manufacturers - especially for fast charging, as this will heat up the battery even more. Stop charging if the smartphone gets very hot (in this case, you should replace the battery or cable). Do not leave charging for a long time if the battery gets hot after 100%. Stop using the device if the body becomes bent or the battery becomes noticeably swollen or deformed. If the recommendations are not followed, the battery may not explode, but the likelihood of failure will increase.
What can you do to make sure it catches fire?
You can pierce the battery with something sharp: the dielectric will collapse - the cathode and anode will react, causing a short circuit. You can leave your phone charging under a heavy stress test and under a desk lamp. But it’s not worth doing either one or the other - it’s impossible to guess what the consequences will be: in one case, the battery will simply smoke and melt the phone, in the other, a jet of flame will shoot out of it.
iFixit engineer Kyle Vines was one of the first to delve into the insides of the Samsung Note 7, so the acts of mass self-immolation of the Korean flagship did not come as a surprise to him. In a column for Wired, Kyle very succinctly explained why this happened and what is wrong with the batteries in our smartphones. This is its translation into Russian.
If Samsung management receives a dollar for every smartphone that explodes, then this money may well be enough to plug the $3 billion budget hole into which the Korean giant has sucked itself. Late at night, Samsung announced that it was completely stopping production of the Note 7 line. And this after the company recalled millions of fresh flagships in September, whose batteries spontaneously caught fire and exploded. Samsung is now asking you to turn off your Note 7 and return it back in a special box. Considering the impossibility of repairing it, we believe that they will go straight to the dustbin of history.
The thing is, Samsung could ask people to just take out their batteries, but it can't. The company itself glued them to its phones.
And this problem is not limited to Samsung. Although they were the ones who were caught red-handed, lithium-ion battery explosions are not uncommon. These batteries are found in everything from smartphones to electric cars, and they are highly unstable. Given the constant temperature stress, such a battery can easily overheat and explode. But equipment manufacturers insist that there is no replacement for the lithium-ion battery. It's glued to the phone on your coffee table, it's built into the tablet your little boy is fiddling with, it powers the laptop in your backpack.
Engineers from Fixit disassembled the Note 7 a few days after its release and came to the conclusion that removing the battery from it is akin to brain surgery. With the difference that the head does not have the property of exploding on the surgeon’s table. To get to the Note 7's battery, we had to quickly remove the back cover to avoid burning our fingers from the hot air, then pry up the glass to pull out a pack of innards before we got to the gadget's tiny battery. While performing such manipulations, we simultaneously prayed to the pagan gods and kept a bucket of sand and a fire extinguisher ready. When Note 7s started exploding en masse, reporters asked me if I was surprised. No, I'm not surprised at all.
Why do batteries explode?
As mentioned above, lithium-ion batteries power literally everything around you, even e-cigarettes. Which, by the way, also explode. Their main advantage is the lightness and energy efficiency of lithium, which is wonderful for equipment manufacturers, because no one today wants to carry a half-kilogram brick in their pocket. But they are terribly fickle.
A lithium-ion battery uses two electrodes as positive and negative terminals, dispersing lithium ions between them during charging. Energy is released by the collision of these ions, which float in opposite directions. If the electrodes suddenly come into contact, a release of energy occurs. This is why there are separators inside batteries that keep the electrodes away from each other.
According to Samsung's report for Bloomberg, the Note 7's main design flaw was the pressure the design puts on the battery cell. As a result, the positive and negative poles collided with each other, releasing excess heat. The result is a big explosion. And there will be more and more such explosions because Manufacturers are using 90% of the potential of lithium-ion batteries, while continuing to insist that this will not affect the safety of gadgets. In turn, buyers want larger screens and more powerful processors, but refuse to sacrifice battery capacity or slower charging for this.
The industry's obsession with thin gadgets requires thin batteries, so manufacturers are increasingly using lithium polymer batteries. It's incredibly thin and comes wrapped in a flexible case that looks like the foil from a cigarette pack. This means that such a battery weighs less and is easier to pack into the phone case. But this also means that you are carrying a miniature bomb in that piece of foil. And then you insert it into the body of the smartphone, which the person will hold near his face.
Recycling and the planet
The guys from Samsung were much better prepared for this misfortune a couple of years ago, when any buyer could safely remove and replace the battery on their Galaxy S5, rather than watch it burn out like a Roman candle. In those days, the Korean giant was an ardent advocate of replaceable batteries (at least in words), and habitually trolled Apple in its advertising, saying that iPhone owners live next to walls with sockets, while Galaxy S5 users can plug it in at any time. phone new battery. But over time, the company changed course, became more like Apple and also glued the battery to the insides of its flagship. And now they are blowing on him.
In general, lithium battery fires are not unusual. Since 2002, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission has recalled about 40 different products due to battery fires. And all because they can be dangerous not only for people, but also for the environment. From the point of view of a waste recycler, such a battery is a complete nightmare. It is difficult and dangerous to dispose of, and it is also expensive. You need to remove it from the case very carefully, with your own hands (but the glue gets in the way). The price of each device includes only a few dollars of budget for recycling, which turns their disposal into an unprofitable activity. Therefore, manufacturers are constantly trying to cheat.
In addition, when recycled, it can burn your workplace. Accidentally puncture it when removing it and it will burst into flames. Put it in the shredder, everything around will glow with a blue flame. With so many reasons to be careful, it is not surprising that lithium polymer batteries are only transported by air.
The CEO of a large waste disposal company recently told me that he deals with battery fires once a week. For example, last year a landfill in Pennsylvania burned for about two days due to an exploding battery. This was the third fire of this level in the last two years. And this is not a problem of irresponsible recyclers, this is a problem of irresponsible manufacturers who continue to glue tiny bombs into their smartphones, chasing profit.
Fortunately, not all manufacturers have gone down this road. For example, the HP Elite X2 tablet has a replaceable battery. LG continues to use replaceable batteries - their latest flagship G5 has one. But now all manufacturers will have to think seriously about the safety of their products in relation to customers, recyclers and Mother Nature.
Perhaps Samsung will be able to get out of the situation, but in any case they will have to completely redesign their smartphones.
