Samsung SDI has been making TVs and monitors for generations, but you probably know about them from the recent Galaxy Note 7 battery debacle. This subsidiary of Samsung was one of the suppliers of batteries for the Galaxy Note 7 and they’ll be a big supplier of batteries for the upcoming Galaxy S8 as well. The company already knows what caused the issue with the batteries last year, so it makes sense that they would get rid of previous stock that wasn’t meeting their new standard.
However, it looks like they weren’t done clearing out the faulty batteries in their Chinese plant. Yesterday, it was reported that a small fire broke out in this plant and that it was caused by “waste products including faulty batteries.” This plant is located in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin and the fire did not happen at the production line of the new batteries that will be used in the Galaxy S8. Instead, the small fire was isolated to a part of the plant that is used for waste products (which included some faulty batteries).
Samsung can’t just throw these bad batteries in the trash can and call it a day. So it makes sense that the faulty units would be laying around until they were able to dispose of them in a proper manner. Still, this doesn’t bode well for the South Korean tech giant as they’re getting ready to launch the Galaxy S8 and are rumored to launch a successor to the Galaxy Tab S2. Thankfully though, the fire was small and it was easy to contain so there weren’t any casualties, nor was there any significant impact to the plant itself.
This specific production plant is only one of 5 total that Samsung SDI has within China, but Reuters reports that this particular plant is a major one for the small batteries used in smartphones.
Source: Reuters