Samsung has officially placed a halt on its sales of The Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, just two weeks after the flagship phone’s launch, after finding batteries of some of the gadgets exploded while they were charging.
Koh Dong-jin, president of Samsung’s mobile business, said customers who already bought Galaxy Note 7s will be able to swap them for new smartphones, regardless of when they purchased them.
This will be Samsung’s first global recall of the flagship smartphone as they have not found ways to specify exactly which phones may endanger users.
At the moment, The Galaxy Note 7s are being pulled from shelves in 10 countries.
Some buyers reported their phones caught fire or exploded while charging, sharing the photos of scorched phones on social media. Samsung said it had confirmed 35 such cases worldwide (so far that is). However, there has been no reports of injuries yet related to the problem.
There has been more than 1 million Galaxy Note 7 smartphones sold since the product’s August 19 launch while about 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7 phones have been manufactured so far, some of them still in inventory. These devices will also be returned and swapped with new ones.
The company estimated that it would take about two weeks to begin swapping old Galaxy Note 7s for new phones.
