Samsung has recently been having sleepless nights due to its exploding battery fiasco, but there’s still a glimmer of hope for the Korean smartphone giant. The company has lifted some weight off its chest and today announced that it has exchanged about “half of all recalled Galaxy Note7 phones sold in the U.S.” They mean to say the ones with the exploding battery feature(lol!)
Additionally, 90 percent of Galaxy Note7 owners have been opting to receive the new Galaxy Note7 since the phones became widely available on Wednesday, September 21,
added the official blogpost.
After chasing to release its flagship device — the Note 7 to the market before its arch-rival Apple, Samsung has played itself and lost even more market share than it was expecting to gain. For those unaware, the recall and replacement process is costing the company a heartbreaking billion dollars.
But, the company has acted quick in replacing about 50 per cent of the defected smartphones with a new one in just a couple days — since it restarted sales on September 21st in the U.S. The second 500k, as rightly stated by all, could take longer as some people are still aloof after all the warnings and software patches, or are just dumb enough to carry their Note 7s even after all the drama.
For those who’ve got a replacement from Samsung now won’t own a Note 7 but a Note 7S, where the S marks that you’ve replaced your defected product with a new one. Also, the company is changing the colour of the battery indicator at the top right corner of the home screen from white to green. It expects to complete the recall by end of this month.
Korean Blockade
While Samsung is (genially!?) celebrating the replacement of over half of the devices in the United States, it has been asked to extend the refund deadline to September 30th in South Korea. Previously, the refund deadline — set during the exploding battery announcement — was September 19th.
But now, the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards has ordered that all new batteries produced by Samsung SDI for Note 7s must go through X-ray tetsing before being shipped overseas. The company itself is also making sure to conduct additional testing for the safety of its consumers.
The whole battery fiasco, as stated in a previous blogpost, occured due to a defect in the batteries that made the anode and cathode come in contact and cause overheating of the devices. Samsung has already exhanged over a quarter i.e 100,000 Note 7s that were recalled due to the battery defect. It had announced the recall of over 400k smartphones it had sold in the country.
