Samsung Completely Halts Production of Galaxy Note 7

Published: October 11, 2016 10:51 AM /

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Samsung Galaxy Note 7

A few weeks ago Samsung recalled 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7 smartphones after a number of them randomly caught fire. Owners of the phone got sent replacements by Samsung but those too turned out to be a little more dangerous than Samsung intended them to be.

Yep.
Yep.

This news comes from a Samsung supplier talking to the Korean news outlet Yonhap News, saying that Samsung has been working closely with safety regulators in South Korea, China, and the United States to replace the faulty units. American telecom providers have stopped offering the Galaxy Note 7 altogether after a string of new incidents with the supposedly safe replacements for their flagship device proving to be just as faulty as the originals.

Some of these new incidents have been reported on by other outlets, and some of them are nothing short of horrifying. Last Wednesday, a plane waiting to depart from Louisville was evacuated after a passenger's replacement phone started spewing out smoke despite its owner having switched off the device shortly before. Another incident involved a teenager in Minnesota who reported that her replacement phone broke heated up so much that it burned through its protective outer shell.

The most horrifying story comes from a man in Kentucky who reportedly woke up in the middle of the night to find that his room was filled with smoke, which resulted in him having to go to a hospital after he starting "vomiting black". He later got diagnosed with acute bronchitis. This phone, too, was a replacement phone handed out by Samsung and was supposed to be safe.

While there are more examples (one from Taiwan and South Korea), these should be more than enough to convince you to look for a replacement if you own a Galaxy Note 7. Samsung has also responded to these new incidents by saying that they're "temporarily adjusting the Galaxy Note 7 production schedule in order to take further steps to ensure quality and safety matters", saying that they plan to provide people with an update within a month.

VR developer Oculus has also disabled the GearVR app on the Galaxy Note 7 following this new string of incidents.

If you own either the original or the replacement phone you should really power that thing down and look for a replacement. A lot of these incidents involve people just using their phone normally, which suggests that the phone has problems on a basic design level, possibly due to Samsung rushing into development to take advantage of the iPhone 7's perceived lack of any meaningful iteration over the iPhone 6.

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Chris Anderson
| Staff Writer

I've been playing games since I was just barely able to walk so I might as well write about them.