After Galaxy Note 7 Explosion Mess, the Samsung Note 8 Battery Has Smaller Capacity

A year after one of the biggest PR and environmental nightmares a phone manufacturer has faced, Samsung is back with the Galaxy Note 8, the successor to a smartphone that had to be recalled because the batteries in some phones exploded.

The early reviews for the Note 8 are good, and Samsung is hoping to a return to form. The company seems to be playing it conservatively with the battery on the new device. However, an iFixit teardown has found that the new battery has a capacity of 12.71 Wh, which is 6 percent less than the 13.48 Wh-capacity battery in the Galaxy Note 7. It's a slight increase over the Galaxy Note Fan Edition, a phone released in July for those who couldn't wait for the newly revamped model.

Samsung itself says it has completely changed its battery safety checks at the factory.

"We've re-assessed every step of the smartphone manufacturing process and developed our 8-Point Battery Safety Check," the company notes on a new website about the Note 8's review process. "It involves putting our batteries through extreme testing, inside and out, followed by careful inspection by X-ray and the human eye to ensure highest quality."

Even in the Note 7, battery explosions were relatively rare. But Samsung ended up scrapping that entire product line. Experts say this is because there was no way to easily remove and replace the battery, meaning it couldn't simply mail consumers new batteries. Because getting into the phone is quite difficult and the battery itself was glued down, the average consumer couldn't perform a repair. On that front, Samsung hasn't made any changes: It's difficult to get into the innards of the Galaxy Note 8, and the battery is still glued down (making it tougher to repair and ultimately harder to recycle).