circuiting the batteries and causing them to combust.
Hong Kong–based Amperex (“Supplier B”), he said, manufactured
functional batteries in the earlier batch of Note 7s. The problems began
when Samsung turned the supplier into its sole battery provider, introducing
errors in its next batch of ten million batteries for Samsung’s post-recall
phones. Samsung’s testers discovered protrusions left over from the welding
process, which caused more short circuits and fires.
Together engineers designed what Samsung called an eight-step battery-
testing plan, a series of much tougher tests on the batteries before they were
shipped to the market.
“The lessons we have learned are now deeply reflected in our processes
and our culture,” D.J. said.
The case, as far as Samsung was concerned, was closed.
Some of the journalists and analysts watching the press conference were
taken aback.
“The rather poor way they handled the first recall suggests that they
have trouble accepting problems until they become quite big and they have
no choice but to face them,” Willy C. Shih, a professor at Harvard Business
School, told The New York Times. “This time, it will really call into
question how they communicate problems, whether management is open to
hearing things from the front line.”
After sitting through an interview with D.J. Koh in which he placed
stacks of photos on the table about the testing that had been done, and
made his case, The Wall Street Journal’s tech columnists Geoffrey Fowler
and Joanna Stern gave Samsung’s battery fix a C grade.
Two separate sets of bad batteries from two separate companies?
“That’s like a meteor striking your house—twice,” the pair wrote.
Park Chul Wan, the battery sleuth who first told me, “It’s not the
batteries,” and predicted the problems weren’t solved, told me that the
presentation, while true, left out points he wanted to see answered.
“Samsung claimed that the problem lay in the battery manufacturing,”
he told me. “If so, this means that the issues can be solved by tightening up
the manufacturing process.”
Samsung claimed it did upgrade its manufacturing process. Chul Wan
showed me the upgraded design of the just-released Galaxy S8 as a
counterpoint.