A teardown of the exploding Samsung Galaxy Note 7

The smartphone known as the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is completely extinct. After the initial devices caught fire, and then the replacement ones began to, the company decided to yank the Note 7 entirely. But for those curious, let’s take a look at the components that were inside the smartphone before it completely burned out.

At 153.53 mm long, 75.01 mm wide, and 8.08 mm thick, weighing 168.4 g, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 had a 2.15-GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 MSM8996 processor. It was equipped with 4GB of LPDDR4 SDRAM, 64GB of MLC NAND flash internal storage, and had up to 256GB of external storage via a microSD card. The smartphone had a 5.7-inch AMOLED display, rendering 2560 x 1440 pixels with a multitouch capacitive touchscreen. 

Additionally, the Note 7 had a 5-megapixel CMOS front camera and a 12-megapixel rear camera with autofocus, LED flash, OIS, HDR, and 4K video. Its sensors included a 6-axis MEMS accelerometer and gyroscope, a 3-axis electronic compass, a digital barometric pressure sensor, heart rate sensor, two Hall Effect ICs, a color, ambient light, and proximity sensor with IR emitter LED, a fingerprint sensor, and a 2-axis MEMS OIS gyroscope. Connectivity options included Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS/GLONASS, FM Radio, and USB-C 3.1. The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was available in black, blue coral, silver, and gold.

The full teardown report can be found here.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 kept bursting into flames for two reasons: Affected batteries manufactured by Samsung SDI had a casing that was too small, causing the negative electrodes to bend. The second problem was with affected batteries manufactured by ATL that had sharp burrs developed during the welding process. Once the electrodes expanded, the burrs infiltrated insulation layers, which, in turn, increased the risk of the battery short-circuiting.

Because dozens of batteries burst into flames, Samsung recalled more than 2.5 million Note 7 phones globally, a figure that is one of the largest we’ve seen in consumer electronics history.