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Samsung put together a new multi-faceted safety plan for designing new phones in the wake of the Galaxy Note 7 disaster. The new guidelines are called the “Multi-layer Safety Measures” and were unveiled in the same press release in which Samsung highlighted the results of its probe into what made the Galaxy Note 7 battery fail and how it planned to prevent that from happening again. The infographic detailing the new process reveals that Samsung will be applying new standards to battery design for safeguards and failure-proof core design, adding extra features to new phones’ hardware to facilitate additional protections against catastrophic failure. Additionally, the company will be making some changes to the software side of things so that future devices can detect issues and shut down before disasters happen.
While Samsung did not provide much information in the infographic itself, the results of its investigation into the Galaxy Note 7 and Samsung’s promises for new safety standards in manufacturing can give us an idea of what the new design standards for batteries will entail. The infographic states that new batteries will have improved safety standards for materials and not much else. Given the results of the inspection, this most likely means that Samsung will be giving future batteries more wiggle room design-wise and use tougher materials for protective substrates like the anode and cathode separator. Flame-retardant measures within the battery could also show up in Samsung’s future offerings. The newest promise for hardware design, the inclusion of brackets to support proper fit and finish internally, sings much the same tune. Essentially, Samsung is planning to make its future batteries harder to break, and design them in a way that will prevent both squeezing and rattling.
Regarding software, Samsung promised to improve the algorithm used to help phones figure out when something is going wrong. Moreover, the company promised to improve the software features meant to keep things from going wrong in the first place. Namely, future phones will better manage the temperature and voltage of a battery while charging and also consider charging duration. All sorts of electronics, cell phones included, can malfunction when charging, so improvements in these areas are always welcome. In overall, Samsung is seemingly making changes in design and quality assurance to ensure that they don’t put any bad batteries into their phones and that all of their future batteries operate under optimal conditions.
