Supplier that built the Note7’s explosion-prone batteries catches on fire
Sometimes the irony is just too much.
According to Bloomberg, a fire broke out at a factory in Tianjin, China, that may have manufactured the faulty batteries that led to Galaxy Note7 smartphones catching on fire worldwide last year.
A factory of Samsung SDI, a Samsung affiliate battery division that was responsible for the Note7’s batteries, experienced a “minor” fire and a Samsung SDI spokesperson told Bloomberg it happened at a waste depository within the factory and had no affect on battery production. However, it still took 19 fire engines and 110 firemen to control the situation, according to the South China Morning Post.
The Note7 was recalled twice and permanently discontinued after replacement phones with “safe” batteries produced by another supplier, China’s Amperex Technology Ltd, also started exploding.
more picture about Samsung SDI in tianjin is on fire… pic.twitter.com/Ui6J4mGwSj
— 萌萌的电教 (@mmddj_china) February 8, 2017
Local firefighters told the SCMP “lithium-ion batteries and some semi-manufactured battery products” were amongst the materials that caught on fire.
After months of investigation, Samsung announced last month it finally knew what caused the Note7 to explode. The Korean electronics giant blamed the phone’s explosions on two issues: batteries, made by Samsung SDI, that were slightly too big to fit into the Note7’s slim body and manufacturing problems for batteries supplied by Amperex, related to “abnormal weld spots” and missing insulation tape that caused internal circuits to short circuit because lithium ion batteries just love to blow up and set everything on fire.