samsung’s Note 7, the highly sought after phablet was killed off permanently in October after a high number of their handsets exploded or spontaneously combusted. To make matters worse the replacements they sent out to consumers suffered the same fate, this has done a fair amount of damage to the company’s image as a reliable Phone maker. They were also expected to lose $17 billion in potential revenue from the most powerful phone on the market.

Initially they changed the battery supplier as they thought the problem was that the plates inside the battery were too close to each other near its rounded corners.

This would have made it vulnerable to short circuiting. Unfortunately, the problem was not fixed.

An announcement soon

Since the fateful and unexpected ‘boom’ in the market, Samsung have been working hard to try and figure out the cause of the fires. They announced the investigation shortly after they recalled and discontinued the device, in order to find the real reason behind the spontaneous combustion. It has been reported that they have concluded the investigation and found the cause of the problems to the Note 7, nicknamed ‘death-Note’.

They have yet to share the results with the public yet but have stated that they will by mid-January. Sources have stated that by the Korea Herald, say that they have enlisted the help of a leading safety science company, US-based company Underwriter Laboratories.

There is also a separate investigation being run by state-owned Korea Testing Laboratory. The exact date hasn’t been confirmed but they have said that the results will be published in a couple of weeks.

Galaxy A series

In another announcement from Samsung, they have released the details of their next flagship devices, the Galaxy A3, A5 and A7 (2017).

They will house a metal frame with a 3D glass rear much like their recent flagship devices the Galaxy S7, S7 Edge, and Note 5. There is a IP68 certification for dust and water resistance and type-C USB connectivity.

The publishing of the results into the Note 7 faults will likely be timed with the global release of the new handsets following an early January release in Russia. However, if Samsung have pin-pointed the fault as they have stated, the new devices will be perfectly safe.