You heard it right - Samsung stopped manufacturing of its flagship product - Galaxy Note 7

News of Samsung deciding to stop manufacturing of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 has been creating a lot of buzz of late. On few occasions, these ultra modern types of phones were found to be catching fire. Development of technical fault is being cited as a kind of reason for Samsung's this decision.

This article tries to answer in very simple words that what actually may go wrong in such a sophisticated gadget like Galaxy Note 7.

Moore's law (a fundamental law for Electronics Engineers) has been the driving force for the growth of whole research effort since last 50 odd years. Staring from a couple of active devices on a chip (sizing 1cm² only), the number for the same has now grown to about billions of them on such a small piece of area. As a result, the spacing between two parallel conducting interconnects in these tiny areas is a fraction of micron meters (in the range of 0.13 micron meters or even less). For the sake of comparison and quick reference, readers may remind themselves that

• size of a bacteria is about 3 to 5 micron, while thickness of human hair is about 40 micron

For the smooth working of electronic gadgets, controlled flow of current through primary carriers like electrons is a must. Device engineers are expected to develop absolutely fault free designs of electronic circuits, which should be able to operate with in the specified limits of power budget.

Owing to such miniscule dimensions being dealt in, there remains a possibility that basic carriers responsible for flow of current i.e. electrons may collide with each other extensively leading to a kind of short circuit in the device giving rise to outbreak of fire. That is where, team of Engineers from Samsung has erred on not being able to develop a circuit design (while ensuring all checks and balances) which could ensure the easy flow of carriers and hence limiting the amount of heat getting generated.

Phenomenon in micron size dimensions is somehow analogous to what happens, if one tries to operate an Air conditioner using a wire with current carrying capacity of only 5 Amperes. There as well, a large number of carriers get much lesser space to mobilize leading to their collision and development of a short circuit eventually. That is why, air conditioners considered to be heavy-duty electrical gadgets at home need electrical wires with a current carrying capacity of about 20 Amperes.

Electrical wires with such large current carrying capacity are much thicker providing relatively large amount of free space for easy movement of carriers.

Electronic circuit design engineers have been developing absolutely fault free designs to give state of the art products to the world since last so many years.

This one failure from Samsung will definitely prove to be a good piece of learning for researchers and Engineers working in such high-end technology areas and we can expect even better products in time to come.

Picture Courtesy -

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37618618