The combusting batteries of Galaxy Note 7 smartphone by Samsung, which first led to a global recall of the phone and later to an all-out discontinuation of the product, had reportedly been tested for safety at the internal facility of the tech giant. While CTIA, a trade organization that’s responsible for overseeing and approving the safety standards that are applied by manufacturers on phones, which are to go on sale with the biggest wireless carriers in America, has certified the lab of the South Korean giant, Samsung remains the only smartphone maker to make use of internal battery testing facilities for the certification.

According to some of the top experts in the battery testing industry, there is no denying that self-testing does end up creating a conflict of interest, it remains a very common practice of manufacturers to prefer to use their in-house facilities because it gives them the opportunity to better protect their proprietary information and also allows them to speed up the release of their offerings. However, the chief technology officer at CITA, Tom Sawanobori, said that the test labs are typically operated separately. He also put emphasis on the fact that quality checks are run by the association in order to ensure that the smartphone makers remain complaint with the standards set by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineer.

He also added that about 1,500 batteries had been certified by them and this was the first time that an issue had occurred. Reports have revealed that Apple tests its batteries with outside labs whereas Lenovo’s Motorola has revealed that it also uses an in-house facility for conducting testing and the components are later sent out to third parties for the purpose of getting CTIA certification. The details of the testing processes used by other big players such as Microsoft’s Nokia and Huawei haven’t been disclosed.

While Samsung is working to highlight exactly what was the reason for its phones catching fire, the report that the batteries were tested by the company itself is probably going to cast a pall over the already gloomy investigation. This investigation includes the examination of not just the original Galaxy Note 7 phones, but also the replacements it had issued later on. So far, there hasn’t been a lot of developments as nothing has come to light. This could possibly give rise to doubts about the safety of any upcoming products that are being produced by Samsung.

The news cycle is still dominated by reports of incidents with the failed flagship phone of the company and the device has been banned from air travel in a number of countries. On Thursday, Samsung said that it was expecting another blow to its profits, which would be about $3 billion. Thus, the total losses that the company would incur after scrapping the smartphone from its lineup have reached $5 billion. Investors have also echoed the concerns of the analysts that these problems would continue without any explanation, even when a new model is introduced.

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