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Indeed, it just seems inconceivable that a company with Samsung's experience and institutional knowledge about Li-ion technology could so thoroughly and irrepar

Indeed, it just seems inconceivable that a company with Samsung's experience and institutional knowledge about Li-ion technology could so thoroughly and irreparably botch something like this. Li-ion in 2016 is, outside of the occasional 3-5 years-away breakthrough story, boring, a mature technology. One would think the best practices for safely building power supplies around it would have been settled on years ago. Or: Am I wrong and there are in fact several competing standards in the industry right now? Is there actually some present innovation in Li-ion that Samsung may have utilized, in retrospect prematurely, in the Note 7?

dirtbox 10y ago
There are far more boring things that have created immeasurable problems, around 2001/2 capacitors began leaking and rendering almost every electrical device that was fitted with useless after around a year of use. By the time the problem had been discovered, the capacitors were in widespread use all over the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
- blubb-fish 10y ago
  That was not a slip - that was clearly intended failure.
  - simonh 10y ago
    Apparently it was because they used an incomplete copy of an electrolyte formula developed in Japan, but didn't understand the chemistry of the formula properly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague#Industrial_espionage_implicated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague#Industrial_es...
fzzzy 10y ago
While li-ion is widely used in practice, I don't think it's fair to say it is a mature technology (as a sibling commenter points out, there are still lots of research papers coming out in the field) or that it is well understood. For example, Boeing had problems with battery fires on the 787 in 2013 and 2014. "The causes of the battery failures are still unknown."[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner_battery_problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner_battery_...
- Animats 10y ago
  Li-ion is a widely deployed technology that isn't very good. Like coal. This battery chemistry is inherently fragile. Drive a nail through a Li-ion battery and it will explode. Tesla had to put a titanium plate under their battery after some fires from punctures by road debris. If a Li-ion battery overheats, it will go into thermal runaway and increase its temperature until it catches fire. Overcharging alone is sufficient to do this. It takes about six safety devices to make a Li-ion battery reasonably safe. Leave some of them out, and you get the hoverboard debacle. There are safer battery chemistries, such as LiFePO4, but you give up about 14% energy density.
  - LeoPanthera 10y ago
    > Drive a nail through a Li-ion battery and it will explode. It's misleading to say that it "will" explode. As the following video shows, they don't always. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqPFuzRIANs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqPFuzRIANs
    - th0br0 10y ago
      That's LiPo though, not Li-Ion

dirtbox 10y ago

There are far more boring things that have created immeasurable problems, around 2001/2 capacitors began leaking and rendering almost every electrical device that was fitted with useless after around a year of use. By the time the problem had been discovered, the capacitors were in widespread use all over the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

blubb-fish 10y ago
That was not a slip - that was clearly intended failure.
- simonh 10y ago
  Apparently it was because they used an incomplete copy of an electrolyte formula developed in Japan, but didn't understand the chemistry of the formula properly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague#Industrial_espionage_implicated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague#Industrial_es...

fzzzy 10y ago

While li-ion is widely used in practice, I don't think it's fair to say it is a mature technology (as a sibling commenter points out, there are still lots of research papers coming out in the field) or that it is well understood. For example, Boeing had problems with battery fires on the 787 in 2013 and 2014. "The causes of the battery failures are still unknown."[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner_battery_problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner_battery_...

Animats 10y ago
Li-ion is a widely deployed technology that isn't very good. Like coal. This battery chemistry is inherently fragile. Drive a nail through a Li-ion battery and it will explode. Tesla had to put a titanium plate under their battery after some fires from punctures by road debris. If a Li-ion battery overheats, it will go into thermal runaway and increase its temperature until it catches fire. Overcharging alone is sufficient to do this. It takes about six safety devices to make a Li-ion battery reasonably safe. Leave some of them out, and you get the hoverboard debacle. There are safer battery chemistries, such as LiFePO4, but you give up about 14% energy density.
- LeoPanthera 10y ago
  > Drive a nail through a Li-ion battery and it will explode. It's misleading to say that it "will" explode. As the following video shows, they don't always. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqPFuzRIANs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqPFuzRIANs
  - th0br0 10y ago
    That's LiPo though, not Li-Ion