Exploding Note 7 batteries: Standards aren't adequate

A Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy Note 7 smartphone at the headquarters of South Korean mobile ­carrier KT in Seoul, South Korea. Problems with the design and manufacturing of batteries in ­Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 smartphones caused them to overheat and burst into flames. Photo: AP

A Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy Note 7 smartphone at the headquarters of South Korean mobile ­carrier KT in Seoul, South Korea. Problems with the design and manufacturing of batteries in ­Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 smartphones caused them to overheat and burst into flames. Photo: AP

Published Jan 25, 2017

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San Francisco - Defects that caused Samsung Electronics’ Note

7 phones to burst into flames last year revealed that the industry’s voluntary

standards for the design and manufacture of rechargeable batteries aren’t

adequate, a US consumer-safety regulator has concluded.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which negotiated

a recall of 1.9 million of the phones and is conducting its own investigation,

said Tuesday in a press release that standards for lithium-ion batteries in

mobile phones need to be updated.

Those standards were first developed in 2006 and haven’t

been revised since 2011. The agency and Samsung are working with the industry

to "take a fresh look" at the voluntary standard for lithium-ion

batteries in smartphones, the commission said.

"Industry needs to learn from this experience and

improve consumer safety by putting more safeguards in place during the design

and manufacturing stages to ensure that technologies run by lithium-ion

batteries deliver their benefits without the serious safety risks," CPSC

Chairman Elliot Kaye said in the release.

The CPSC action has broad implications for the worldwide

mobile phone industry, which sold 1.98 billion of the devices in 2015,

according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

It is also the latest investigation to raise concerns

about safety in the increasingly potent lithium-based cells, which have become

almost ubiquitous in people’s lives, powering everything from smartphones to

power tools. In recent years, there have been recalls of so-called hoverboard

scooters, the grounding of Boeing Co.’s 787 and a ban on bulk shipments of

batteries by passenger airlines as a result of safety concerns.

“Standards need continuous improvement,” said Dan

Doughty, a consultant on batteries who formerly served as a researcher at

Sandia National Laboratories. “It’s going to be a constant struggle.”

Read also:  Note 7 fires were caused by the battery

The mobile-phone industry follows battery design

guidelines developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Inc., a nonprofit group that works with industry to develop consensus standards

for electrical equipment.

The IEEE guidelines cover design, testing and quality

assurance and are designed to limit “battery failure under multiple

stresses."

IEEE didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment

on its work in this area.

While Kaye’s statement didn’t mention IEEE, it said

Samsung plans to share what it learned from its investigation.

Need to modernise

“Consumers should never have to worry that a

battery-powered device might put them, their family or their property at risk,”

Kaye said. “This is why we need to modernize and improve the safety standards

for lithium-ion batteries in consumer electronics and also stay ahead of new

power sources that will inevitably come along and replace these.”

Samsung deserves credit for sharing its investigation

results and offering to assist the industry, a “very rare thing” in the

secretive and competitive mobile-phone industry, Doughty said.

That competition is at least part of the reason for the

recent failures, according to Jim McGregor, a principal analyst at Tirias

Research LLC, which conducts scientific studies for technology companies.

"If you can’t ensure 100 percent that the battery is

not going to fail, maybe we need to design casing around it,” McGregor said.

But right now, there isn’t casing available that would work in the

space-constrained smartphones, he said.

Dozens of reports

The CPSC reached agreement with Samsung to recall about 1

million Note 7s on September 15, two weeks after the company halted sales of

the phones following dozens of reports of them catching fire or exploding.

After replacement batteries had similar incidents, the recall was expanded.

As of October 13, there had been 96 reports of Note 7

batteries overheating in the US, including 13 in which people were burned and

47 causing property damage, according to CPSC.

Read also:  Can Samsung bounce back from Note 7 fiasco?

The consumer agency praised the efforts of Samsung and

wireless carriers to push customers to return the phones. While most US recalls

have a “low” consumer response rate, 97 percent of Note 7 phones have been

returned, the agency said.

Samsung investigation

Similar to what the company told the US agency last year,

Samsung on Monday released the results of its internal investigation into the

failures, concluding that flaws in battery manufacturing and design had led to

short-circuits causing the overheating incidents and fires.

The company said on Monday it’s focused on learning from

its mistakes as it prepares to launch the next model in its Galaxy S line. A

spokesman on Tuesday had no immediate comment on the CPSC statement.

Lithium-ion batteries have been a boon to manufacturers

of electronic devices because they hold power more efficiently and last longer

than other power packs. At the same time, they have periodically raised safety

concerns because the chemicals inside are flammable and they hold so much

energy that a failure can cause a rapid increase in heat or even an explosion.

Kaye, who was appointed by President Barack Obama and is

expected to be replaced as chairman by President Donald Trump, took the

opportunity to urge Congress to give the agency more funding.

“We have great people and will do the absolute best job

we can with our investigation, but unless Congress finally treats consumer

safety as the priority it should be, we will not be able to match what Samsung

has done by building a new facility for this purpose and using hundreds of

engineers to test hundreds of thousands of phones and batteries,” he said.

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