Hector Abruña, director of the Energy Materials Center at Cornell University and an expert on lithium ion batteries, says Samsung is to blame for trying to create what he calls a thinner “club sandwich” – a layer of electrodes stacked in the phone’s battery – to give its devices a sleek design.
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The four major carriers in the U.S. – Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T and Sprint – have all said customers can visit one of their retail locations to return or exchange the Note 7 and any accessories they may have bought to go with it. Before, Samsung was offering replacements only. As per their refund and exchange strategy, owners of the smartphone could exchange it for a Galaxy S7 or S7 edge or receive a Samsung J Series loaner phone for the time being.
President and COO of Samsung Electronics America addresses customers on the status of the Note 7 recalls. Of those 92, 26 were reports of burns caused by exploding batteries, while another 55 were reports of property damage, including fires in cars and a garage. Samsung announced on September 2 that it had stopped selling the phone and would replace any that had been sold. Neither Samsung nor the Consumer Product Safety Commission immediately responded to a request for comment on whether the recall may be expanded to include other Samsung devices.
US and Japanese aviation authorities have urged passengers not to turn on or charge the large-screen phones on aircraft, while the US Federal Aviation Administration has told passengers not to stow the device in checked baggage. Again, those are only reports in the United States, so you can imagine how many there could be globally.
Samsung said Note 7 purchasers will be offered the choice of a refund or a replacement.
Not all Galaxy Note7 phones are affected. The news about the phone’s risk of catching fire first surfaces one South Korean social media, when users began posting images of their apparently scorched handsets.
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“As a general matter, it’s not a recipe for a successful recall for a company to be going out on its own”, Kaye said in a press conference. “As we’ve seen from videos. the phones really do present a serious fire hazard”.
