The announcement of results from the company’s investigation into one of its worst product fiascos comes three months after the flagship phone was discontinued.
Seven-hundred researchers and engineers tested more than 200,000 devices and more than 30,000 batteries and replicated what happened with the Note 7 phones, the world’s biggest smartphone maker said in a statement.
Samsung said it was “taking responsibility for our failure to ultimately identify and verify the issues arising out of the battery design and manufacturing process. ”
The company recalled 2.5 million Note 7 phones in September after reports they were overheating and catching fire. It blamed lithium batteries from a supplier.
New Note 7s with different batteries also caught fire. So Samsung permanently dropped the premium phone in October. It estimates the problems will cost it at least $5.3 billion through early 2017.
Samsung has taken heat for its handling of the recall and its hasty, apparently incomplete initial investigation into what went wrong.
