In a statement released Tuesday, Elliott Kaye, chairman of the US CPSC, said, "Samsung's announcement of the findings of their investigation into the root cause of both Note 7 batteries that were recalled is an important step forward."

Samsung decided to discontinue the Note 7 in October last year after recalling millions of the devices worldwide over safety concerns.

Samsung made its decision after about 700 Samsung researchers and engineers replicated the incidents by testing more than 200,000 fully assembled devices and more than 30,000 batteries.

Kaye hailed Samsung's efforts to find out what caused the Note 7 fires.

"While CPSC staff continues to conduct an independent investigation, let me set reasonable expectations for how it might go: CPSC is a vital health and safety agency, but we have nowhere near the resources and people power that Samsung does," Kaye said.

"In fact, Samsung employed more engineers and staff to work on just this issue than CPSC has employees in our entire agency," Kaye said.

In the wake of the global recall of the Note 7s, the CPSC plans to assess high-density battery products and technologies, Kaye said.

"We added to the CPSC's 2017 operating plan a project for our technical staff to assess the state of high-density battery technology, innovations in the marketplace, gaps in safety standards, and the research and regulatory activities in other countries," Kaye said.

"Beyond an excellent recall response rate, we need more good to come out of the Note 7 recalls, and I believe Samsung agrees," Kaye said. (Yonhap)