As the story develops it will become clearer as to which shipments have been effected and whether or not Samsung will be prepared to recall the smartphones or continue to delay future shipments.
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Samsung Electronics Co.is expected to announce an unprecedented recall of all of its newest Galaxy Note 7 phablets sold at home and overseas in less than a week, a company official said Thursday, after reports that a few of the devices exploded while being charged.
Samsung only provided a brief statement to Reuters regarding the delays. It’s unclear if shipments have been halted only in Korea, but seeing that reports have been seen in other regions, we would hope that Samsung has ceased them entirely to determine the cause of this issue.
It’s believed that Samsung Electronics has acquired the handset, which was rendered useless during the fire, and is carrying out extensive tests to determine the cause of the explosion.
“This is some major buzz-kill for Samsung, especially given all of the hard-earned excitement that products like the Note 7 have been garnering lately”, IDC analyst Bryan Ma said.
Samsung has acknowledged the reports, with a representative telling The Korea Times, “We have acquired the handsets, which our customers say burst into flames while charging, to identify the reason”.
Pictures of damaged phones could be found on Twitter over the last 24 hours. South Korea’s Yonhap News said five or six explosions were reported by consumers.
A recall of the Galaxy Note 7 would be a big deal, as the Note 7 is Samsung’s new flagship and the company has likely already moved many units. The Note series smartphones are one of the most expensive lineups released by Samsung and usually inherit designs and features of the Galaxy S series that debut in the spring. Samsung also added an iris scanner to the Note 7, which lets users unlock the phone by detecting patterns in the eyes.
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Yonhap News reported that Note 7 deliveries to three South Korean mobile carriers had been stopped earlier this week.
