Samsung Galaxy Note 7 has mostly been accepted as a great phone by both consumers and critics alike but it’s no secret that the South Korean company’s latest flagship shipped with seriously faulty batteries in a lot of regions. Namely, the batteries produced by Samsung SDI have repeatedly proven a worrying tendency to overheat and catch fire while charging. While Samsung has been in full damage control mode for weeks now and will reportedly spend up to a billion dollars just to fully complete the process of replacing the problematic devices, industry experts are debating what went wrong during the company’s quality assurance process which somehow didn’t catch the fact that a significant percentage of batteries manufactured by Samsung SDI is faulty.
There’s actually been a recent development on that front as Bloomberg claims its sources reported Samsung rushed the Galaxy Note 7 because the company was adamant at beating Apple’s iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus to the market. More specifically, sources suggest Samsung’s market and industry experts concluded that the new iPhone won’t be a big upgrade on the last year’s model. They came to this conclusion early in the year and agreed that this is the perfect opportunity for the South Korean consumer electronics manufacturer to introduce a flagship that – unlike the iPhone 7 – is obviously superior to its predecessor. However, that was only the first step in the plan to beat Apple; the second one was to get the Note 7 to the market before Apple releases this year’s iteration of iPhone. Sources report that in the end, performing that second step meant Samsung had to rush the Galaxy Note 7 launch which was eventually moved up by ten whole days.
Naturally, the South Korean consumer electronics manufacturer refused to comment on this report and it’s not realistic to expect the company will ever reveal the truth behind what went wrong with the Galaxy Note 7 launch, but it’s not a huge leap to think Samsung was on a tight schedule because of Apple. Namely, the company’s flagship devices directly compete with Apple’s smartphones and unlike previous years, Note 7 was planned for release close to the iPhone 7 launch. In other words, it would have definitely made sense for Samsung to try and beat the next iPhone to the market.