I'm glad my question was finally answered! During the paranoia in September/October, I remember reading everything and wondering why nothing seemed to explain why the issue happened in the first place. Note7's aren't exactly the only tech with batteries...
Otherwise, sorry for being negative, but this doesn't seem like a very complicated reason for the batteries to have been defective, right? Why didn't they just release this a couple of weeks after the incidents started happening? (Did they want to confirm with a large number of the recalled ones they got back you think?)
There were about 100 reported incidents out of something like 2.5 million Note 7 manufactured, so whatever the defect is it is not a common one and thus hard to find and confirmed. Not to mention most of the phones with problem burned so you can't "debug" them directly.
Otherwise, sorry for being negative, but this doesn't seem like a very complicated reason for the batteries to have been defective, right? Why didn't they just release this a couple of weeks after the incidents started happening? (Did they want to confirm with a large number of the recalled ones they got back you think?)