Image source: AP/Ahn Young-joon
BY YOUKYUNG LEE - Samsung Electronics said Friday it will announce on Jan. 23 the reason why its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones overheated and caught fire.
The announcement will be livestreamed in Chinese, English and Korean on its websites. Koh Dong-jin, Samsung's mobile president, will give details of the probe.
The Galaxy Note 7 was a fiasco for the world's largest smartphone maker. Samsung recalled and eventually discontinued it after numerous reports of it overheating and bursting into flames.
Initially, Samsung said it found a small error in the manufacturing process for some of the batteries in the phones was to blame. It replaced the phones with a new battery but those replaced phones also overheated and caught fire, prompting Samsung to pull the phones from the market. That cost Samsung at least $5 billion.
The announcement comes after a South Korean court dismissed on Thursday a request by prosecutors to arrest Samsung Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong heir.
Lee, the conglomerate's heir and de facto head, is under investigation for alleged bribery in connection with an influence-peddling scandal that led to the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye.
2017 The Associated Press
(brl/red)
