good news / How the Galaxy Note 8 will keep you from getting burned

How the Galaxy Note 8 will keep you from getting burned

The good news: On average, you've got a far greater chance of being struck by lightning than of seeing a battery catastrophically fail. And Samsung's new batteries are likely to be even safer.

What Samsung has done

As we explained last January in a delightful video featuring a creme-filled chocolate cake roll, the reason Samsung's batteries failed was a series of preventable manufacturing errors.

Some of the original batteries weren't quite constructed properly and got a little bit squished, while some of the replacements were missing insulation tape and/or had sharp metal bits that punched through. Either way, the positive and negative sides of the battery were allowed to touch and -- zap! -- they short-circuited, igniting the flammable liquid that lives inside every lithium-ion battery cell.

Mind you, that new safety check was already in place when Samsung started selling the Galaxy S8 in April. But for the new Note 8, the company went a step further. The famous safety standard company Underwriters Laboratories (UL) is now independently testing and certifying the Note 8's battery pack as well.