Kiwi mobile retailers are replacing customers’ Samsung Galaxy Note 7s after the phone’s battery was found to be fire-prone, prompting a global recall. Reportedly, a few “explosion” incidents during or after charging the Note 7 have occurred in the United States and South Korea.
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Samsung’s investigation had been underway after media reports said that some of the large-screen smartphones had caught fire while charging.
On Friday, Samsung announced its findings that some of the new devices that went on sale two weeks ago caught fire due to a “battery cell issue”. And M1 only said, “In line with Samsung’s global Note 7 sales halt, M1 has stopped sales of the handset”.
The phone was only launched on 20 August and has since then been generally well-received by critics and consumers. The phone is also available in Canada and South Korea.
The giant South Korean company originally said it would take about two weeks to prepare the recall, but later announced Note 7 users in the USA can exchange their device for a Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 Edge, starting next week.
While recalls in the smartphone industry do happen, including for rival Apple Inc, the nature of the problem for the Galaxy Note 7 is a serious blow to Samsung’s reputation, analysts said. “Samsung is committed to producing the highest quality products and we take every incident report from our valued customers very seriously”, the company said. Since the Note 7 costs more than either of the two phones, they will also get a refund of the price difference between them.
In a bid to fix the damage done by the global recall of its flagship premium device Galaxy Note 7 over battery faults, Samsung said they would start exchanging the smartphones as early as next week and customers could swap it with either the Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge. The company will surely be affected by such a move, as its image and revenues will see a downfall. However, this is said to be an “absolute worst-case scenario”.
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On Friday the tech company announced they were having problems with the battery.
