The story of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 does not appear to have been concluded. A report has appeared that Samsung is planning to sell refurbished units of the ill-fated smartphone. Naturally, the batteries that doomed the devices will be changed before they are shipped.
The devices are apparently destined for emerging markets like India and Vietnam; although the report also suggests that it could be sold in South Korea. It’s unknown which other countries will see the refurbished Note 7. That being said, the smartphone is unlikely to make its way back to the US and Europe due to problems with regulations.
Samsung will be fitting the Galaxy Note 7 with a smaller capacity battery than the original. Which is an understandable change considering that this is where the defects happened in the first place. The new batteries will range between 3,000 and 3,200mAh.
Samsung will also be building new casings for the Note 7, only reusing the core components.
The move is supposedly to minimise profit loss and environmental costs associated with disposing of such a large amount of electronics. Some 200,000 Note 7s were used in determining the cause of the fires that initially plagued the devices; and Samsung is said to have about 2.5 million units remaining.
Refurbishing the returned Galaxy Note 7 sounds like a decent move from Samsung. The company moved very quickly to identify the cause of the battery defects that caused the devices to combust. Replacing the problematic batteries with lower capacity variants address one of the concerns surrounding the issue of increasingly thin batteries.
Whether the public is ready to forgive Samsung and pick up a new Galaxy Note 7 is probably going to rely on the price point. Targeting emerging markets may hint at a much lower price; which may make this a very interesting move from Samsung.
It’s currently unknown if the device will be coming to Malaysia, and we’ll be on the lookout for any news on the matter.
[Source: Hankyung]
