A recent Samsung press release issued Tuesday announced the availability of 500,000 safe Galaxy Note 7 devices, three weeks after reports about exploding devices.
Though the company has not shared details regarding the number of devices sold out, earlier reports indicated that approximately 2.5 million devices were sold globally. As per the company, 25 per cent of the damaged phones have already been exchanged.
Another new firmware update, which will be pushed to both the old and fixed Note 7 devices, will make a few changes to the interface. One of them is a minor one that will change the Note 7’s battery icon to green instead of the standard Android Monochrome.
The change on original devices, which were sold before September 15, won’t make any major differences. Users will now get an alert on the ‘fire-prone’ devices, reminding them about the risk and asking them to remove it from charge.
In the press release, Tim Baxter, president of Samsung Electronics America, said, “Working hand-in-hand with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), we are delivering as promised and moving quickly to educate consumers about the recall and make new Note7s available.”
Though the smartphones have been diligently replaced by the company, it will be interesting to see how many people would, in fact, exchange their present Note 7 devices for a new one. There have been past instances where users have suffered dangerous injuries owing to the faulty Note 7 devices.
One positive for Samsung, though, is the fact that it has been able to quickly rectify the problem and re-launch the smartphone before Apple’s could have gained complete bragging rights. It would be interesting to see which phone manages to create a larger ripple in the smartphone space.
