[El Cid]

I know that you are an Apple aficionado.
Do you think the Samsung battery problems were due to sloppy design/checkout? Poor battery supplier choice, and poor quality controls? Poor internal qualification procedures at Samsung? Or did Apple just dodge a bullet, and it could have happen to them also?

I imagine there was a lot of gut wrenching double-checking of the batteries on the Apple side when they first heard the news. And a lot of clinking of the champagne glasses in the aftermath.

[Swordmaker]

Do you think the Samsung battery problems were due to sloppy design/checkout? Poor battery supplier choice, and poor quality controls? Poor internal qualification procedures at Samsung? Or did Apple just dodge a bullet, and it could have happen to them also?

Frankly, I think that Lithium Ion batteries do not respond well to rapid charge cycles as well as Samsung and other Android makers think they do. I think the process causes internal changes that may make them susceptible to rapid overheating on discharge. This rapid overheating can be exacerbated by slight physical damages during construction or even pressure on the battery case which may precipitate an arcing inside the battery case. Slow trickle charging does not precipitate this overheating. Fast charging does.

The normal, expected failure rate in Lithium Ion batteries is one in 8 million per year, yet these Samsung devices were failing at about 250 per million per month, or ~3,000 times that normal rate.

Apple has deliberately chosen to not implement rapid charging for a reason they will not go into to. . . I suspect this is the reason.