The explosion of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 caused by the flaw of battery design may be one of the most memorable high-tech news in 2016. Shortly after the 2017 Lunar New Year, Samsung’s battery supplier, SDI, claimed that a fire incident occurred at its Tianjin factory on February 8th and it may be caused by lithium batteries again. But Samsung officials indicated that the production lines are not affected.

Although Samsung didn’t respond to the fire incident right away, the company confirmed the news of the fire later in the afternoon today.

Apple Daily quoted Bloomberg’s phone interview with SDI’s spokesman, Shin, saying there was indeed a fire incident at SDI’s Tianjin factory but none of the production were affected. According to CNA’s weibo, 600 employees have been evacuated, with no one injured.

However, according to the official weibo of the fire station at Tianjin Wuqing Development Zone, lithium batteries and some semi-finished products on the production lines are suspected to be the reasons to the fire. The fire has been extinguished at around 3pm today.

SDI is a subsidiary of Samsung and is in charge of the R&D and production of small lithium batteries, vehicle batteries, energy storage technology, and electronic materials, and also is a major battery supplier for Galaxy Note 7. According to the Nomura Securities’ forecast, 65% of Galaxy Note 7 batteries is supplied by SDI and most of the exploded batteries are provided by SDI as well.

In order to understand the cause of Note 7 battery explosion, Samsung spent nearly half a year to test. The final conclusion is the poor battery design.

SDI has a number of production bases in China, in which Tianjin factory is mainly in charge of battery production. Tech News pointed out that SDI will also supply the batteries for Note 8 as well as other vehicle batteries. 

(Photo Credit: Weibo)