Samsung Moved Up the Galaxy Note 7's Launch to Beat a Phone Reviewers Called Boring. The Boring Phone Was Still Legal to Bring on an Airplane.
On August 19, 2016, Samsung launched the Galaxy Note 7 ahead of its usual schedule. According to Bloomberg's reporting at the time, the move was deliberate: get to market before Apple's iPhone 7, a phone the tech press had already pegged as an incremental, unexciting refresh — same design, no headphone jack, nothing to write home about. Samsung wanted to own the news cycle before the "dull" phone arrived and stole the attention anyway.
Five days later, the first Note 7 caught fire. By October 15, the United States government had banned the device from every American aircraft — carry-on, checked bag, or cargo hold, no exceptions. The iPhone 7, boring as advertised, remained fully permitted on every one of those same flights.
The Timeline
- August 19, 2016 — Galaxy Note 7 launches, ahead of schedule.
- August 24, 2016 — First fire report surfaces, days after launch.
- September 2, 2016 — Samsung announces an informal global recall.
- September 15, 2016 — Official CPSC recall: roughly 1 million units in the US, 2.5 million worldwide. At that point the commission had logged 92 US incident reports, 26 burn injuries, and 55 reports of property damage.
- Late September–October 2016 — Samsung ships "safe" replacement units. The replacements also catch fire.
- October 10, 2016 — Samsung halts the replacement program entirely.
- October 11–13, 2016 — Samsung announces permanent discontinuation, pulling an estimated 1.9 to 2.5 million devices from the market — about two months after launch.
- October 15, 2016 — The FAA and Department of Transportation ban all Galaxy Note 7 units from US flights. DOT Secretary Anthony Foxx: "the safety of all those aboard an aircraft must take priority."
Two Suppliers, Two Different Ways to Fail
On January 23, 2017, Samsung mobile chief D.J. Koh bowed at a press conference in Seoul and delivered the results of an investigation that had used 700 engineers to test more than 200,000 devices and over 30,000 batteries, independently checked by UL, Exponent, and TÜV Rheinland. The findings were not one defect. They were two, from two different battery suppliers, neither one aware of the other's mistake.
- Battery A (Samsung SDI): the battery casing and negative electrode were sized and positioned incorrectly for the cell, allowing the electrode plates to make contact and short out.
- Battery B (Amperex Technology Ltd. / ATL): a separate manufacturing flaw — missing insulation tape and burrs left by ultrasonic welding — punctured the separator between the anode and cathode.
Two unrelated defects, from two unrelated production lines, both sailed through quality control on a compressed launch schedule built to beat a phone nobody was excited about.
The Bill
Samsung's own accounting put the total cost of the recalls at a minimum of $5.3 billion, with roughly $3 billion of that landing across the two quarters immediately following the withdrawal. The company that replaced a recalled product with a second recalled product then discontinued the line altogether, less than sixty days after telling the world it couldn't wait to ship it.
Grounded
By mid-October, US aviation regulators had done something that had never applied to a smartphone before: banned it, categorically, from flight. Not "declare it at security." Not "keep it powered off." Banned — from the cabin, from the overhead bin, from the checked luggage, from the cargo hold. Airlines began making pre-boarding announcements asking passengers by name for the make and model of their phone.
Meanwhile, in Cupertino
The iPhone 7 that Samsung raced to upstage shipped on schedule on September 16, 2016 — one day after the Note 7's official CPSC recall. It kept its home button, kept its familiar aluminum unibody, dropped the headphone jack, and was widely described by reviewers as safe, competent, and unremarkable. It was never recalled. It was never banned from an airplane. It remained, for the duration of its production life, boring.
Samsung SDI has continued supplying batteries to Samsung devices. Amperex Technology Ltd. has continued supplying batteries to other major electronics manufacturers. The Galaxy Note 8 launched in August 2017, one year almost to the day after the Note 7, with an aluminum battery casing widened for extra clearance and an eight-point safety inspection process. The iPhone 7, never subjected to any of that, spent the same year being carried onto airplanes without a single passenger being asked to declare it at the gate.
Filed from public reporting:
- CPSC — "Samsung Recalls Galaxy Note7 Smartphones"
- CPSC — "Samsung Expands Recall of Galaxy Note7 Smartphones"
- DOT — "DOT Bans All Samsung Galaxy Note7 Phones from Airplanes"
- CNN Money — "FAA banning Samsung Galaxy Note 7 from all flights"
- TIME — "A Brief History of Samsung's Failed Galaxy Note 7 Smartphone"
- CBC News — "Samsung says Note 7 recalls will cost at least $5.3B"
- Samsung Newsroom — "Samsung Electronics Announces Cause of Galaxy Note7 Incidents"
- CNN Money — "Samsung blames batteries for Galaxy Note 7 fires"
- 9to5Mac — "Samsung's exploding phones the result of a rush to beat the 'dull' iPhone 7"
- Engadget — "With its Note 7 apology, Samsung finally gets something right"
