Reuters reports that an internal Samsung investigation has concluded the Galaxy Note 7’s fires and explosions were not caused by faults in hardware or software, but by the devices’ batteries. This information has been provided by ‘a person familiar with the matter’ ahead of an official Samsung report that is expected to be released on January 23. The company is also expected to detail measures for the prevention of similar problems on the upcoming Galaxy S8 and other future Samsung mobile devices. 

Samsung initially started recalling the Note 7 in September last year, offering other Samsung phones as loaners until a ‘replacement’ model arrived. Unfortunately, some of the latter too caught on fire until Samsung decided to pull the plug on the Note 7 entirely, stopping all production and marketing of the device and recalling a total of 2.5 million units.

Reportedly, Samsung wasn’t initially able to locate the source of the problem, despite assigning hundreds of engineers to the task. However, eventually the fires could be replicated in testing, without finding any fault with hardware or software. Considering Samsung was using several battery suppliers for the Note 7 it seems unlikely that batteries were the sole problem in the scenario. So, we are hoping to be provided with some more detail once the official report is released.