Samsung have been in a pretty bad situation lately, as the company just announced a mass recall of their popular Galaxy Note 7 phone, valid for the entire world. The reason for the emergency measure is reportedly an issue with the design of the device, leading to a risk of an explosion. Carriers in the US have already started responding to the issue and are working with Samsung to get the devices pulled from the market and from customers who’ve already bought them.
According to reports, the issue isn’t that widespread – it apparently affects less than 1% of the devices on the market – but given the seriousness of a phone potentially exploding in a user’s pocket, it’s good to see that the company isn’t taking any chances. There’s no doubt that other less scrupulous manufacturers would have preferred to keep quiet and hope that there aren’t too many affected users.
Still, even with the company doing everything they can to remedy the situation, we expect that it would cost them quite a lot in the long run, and not just in the form of financial losses from the returned devices. People will be far less trusting in Samsung from now on, and we don’t doubt that this incident will reflect on their future sales. The company could make some public announcements regarding what happened, but it still likely won’t be enough.
Exploding smartphone batteries are nothing new, but usually it’s the result of faulty manufacturing or mishandling by the user. The batteries used in modern smartphones actually hold quite the serious charge, and certain things – like, for example, puncturing the cell with a knife – can lead to disastrous results.
It’s also worth noting that this isn’t the first time Samsung have been in the news because of a fire-related issue, although it hasn’t been on such a major scale before. There was a famous incident in which a reddit user reported that his Samsung Galaxy S4 had caught fire spontaneously, and Samsung had been very unhelpful in the whole ordeal, to the point of ignoring him completely.
Back then, an HTC representative quickly used the situation by replying to the post, asking the user if he’d like a free One M8 instead of fighting for a replacement for his S4. Following the encouragement of other users who were surprised by the gesture, the poster found himself with a new device, and possibly a new favorite manufacturer.
With that in mind, it’s understandable why Samsung would take such an incident seriously nowadays, although the company has still been a bit too quiet on the issue for some people’s tastes. We don’t know what else they can say on top of their current statements to calm people down though, but some special promotions and possibly even device giveaways in the next weeks would not be a bad idea.
Some are focused on the impending financial issues for the company following the recall. There is quite the large number of Galaxy Note 7 units out there, and the company will have to spend a lot of money to get them all back. It’s not just about repaying their users and vendors either, as they’ll also have to cover the logistical cost of the whole operation, which surely would not be low, given that it’s a global recall.