Researcher says bad battery design, manufacturing errors led to Note7 debacle

We all want our smartphones to be lighter, thinner and more powerful. At the same time, we want them to run longer.Smartphone, laptop, and tablet designers do their best to deliver all of that, but those contradictory demands may make it harder for manufacturers to build safe batteries. This issue may well be a root cause of the frightening series of fires caused by malfunctioning batteries in Samsung's new Note7 smartphone, according to Hector Abruña, the director of the Energy Mate