Before the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 could hit India, the South Korean company has issued a global recall of the handset. Several reports of the Galaxy Note 7 batteries exploding have surfaced since the launch of the Galaxy Note 7 in several markets.
The Note series has been in trouble since last year. The Note 5 which was 2015’s Note phone suffered the Pen-gate where the S-Pen would get stuck upside down in the Note body and cause the Note 5 to stop working.
This year it seems safety is a bigger concern and Samsung has decided to pull its products from shelves before any other injury can happen.
Samsung said that 35 cases of the fault have been reported to date, and it estimates the problem affects only 24 in a million devices, which equates to roughly one for every 42,000 sold. Which by itself is a small number, but in a case like this you wouldn’t want to be the owner of that one device.
In comparison to recalls this will be the highest-profile consumer tech recall, companies like Fitbit and beats have done tech recalls in the past. Samsung will need to recall and replace batteries in over 2 Million Galaxy Note 7 handsets , along with a complete change of the manufacturing process, before the company can re-introduce the product to market.
Samsung has stopped sales effective immediately and has requested customers with exiting Note 7 devices to contact their customer care centres/ phone numbers to request a replacement.
The recall will be an expensive one for Samsung and may completely hurt the reputation and hype the company was trying to build, by launching the Note 7 over a month prior to any Apple announcement. Read the full report below:
Samsung is committed to producing the highest quality products and we take every incident report from our valued customers very seriously. In response to recently reported cases of the new Galaxy Note 7, we conducted a thorough investigation and found a battery cell issue.
To date (as of September 1) there have been 35 cases that have been reported globally and we are currently conducting a thorough inspection with our suppliers to identify possible affected batteries in the market. However, because our customers’ safety is an absolute priority at Samsung, we have stopped sales of the Galaxy Note 7.
For customers who already have Galaxy Note 7 devices, we will voluntarily replace their current device with a new one over the coming weeks.
We acknowledge the inconvenience this may cause in the market but this is to ensure that Samsung continues to deliver the highest quality products to our customers. We are working closely with our partners to ensure the replacement experience is as convenient and efficient as possible.
