New LG phone influenced by Samsung’s Note 7 troubles
Samsung’s fiasco with its fire-prone Note 7 phone has pushed its rival LG to take additional precautions with its next smartphone.
Samsung recalled millions of Note 7 phones after dozens overheated and caught on fire . Samsung blamed numerous problems with its batteries and announced tighter quality controls and more rigorous testing.
LG said it’s doubling the separation between the battery’s positive and negative chambers to reduce the risk of a short. Samsung’s investigators found that overly thin separators were partly to blame for the Note 7 problems.
LG also redesigned the phone’s interior to separate the two main sources of heat — the main processor and the display driver — and turned other components into heat sinks to dissipate heat.
“We started by placing these two (sources) as far apart as possible and then built the phone around it,” LG spokesman Frank Lee said.
Even though the company hasn’t had the types of failures that Samsung experienced with the Note 7 batteries, Lee said wireless carriers are seeking greater safety assurances for all phones they sell.
“What’s important for them is to make sure that they present to their subscribers a quality, stable product,” Lee said in an interview. “This caught the entire market off-guard.”
LG unveiled its next phone, the G6, ahead of Monday’s opening of the Mobile World Congress wireless show in Barcelona, Spain. Samsung has said it’s delaying its next major phone, the Galaxy S8, until after the show.
LG has a tiny share of a worldwide smartphone market dominated by Apple and Samsung. LG didn’t gain significantly following the Note 7 recall.