Samsung has issued a worldwide recall of its latest flagship device, the Galaxy Note 7, amid reports of exploding batteries while the smartphone is being charged.
A report was earlier released about a possible global recall, coming a day after Samsung said it would be delaying further shipments of the Galaxy Note 7 to be able to carry out additional quality control testing. Samsung did not specify the markets that will be affected by the delay and for how long the shipment hold will be in place.
The planned worldwide recall, as reported earlier by the Yonhap News Agency, will be announced in less than a week, according to a company official. The source confirmed that the cases of explosions for the Galaxy Note 7 are connected with the smartphone's battery.
It seems that Samsung was able to hasten the process though, as through an official statement, the company announced that it was pushing through with the worldwide recall, in addition to stopping sales of the Galaxy Note 7.
According to the Yonhap report, a Samsung official said that the announcement of the Galaxy Note 7 recall was not likely to be made on Friday, Sept. 2, as the company is still talking with business partners regarding the issue. The official specified Verizon as one of the partner companies that Samsung is in discussion with, further suggesting the global nature of the planned product recall.
The official announcement of the recall was then released just hours later.
As of Sept. 1, according to Samsung, there have been 35 cases of a battery cell issue related to the exploding Galaxy Note 7 batteries. To prevent further instances, Samsung said that it will be voluntarily replacing all the purchased Galaxy Note 7 devices over the coming weeks.
One of the previously thought reasons behind the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone catching fire was the usage of third-party USB Type-C cables to charge up the device. While that was plausible, given that there are faulty third-party USB Type-C cables that do not meet the necessary specifications, it seems that the problem is with the Galaxy Note 7's battery itself.
According to the Samsung official that flagged the recall with Yonhap, the faulty battery is only found in less than 0.1 percent of all the Galaxy Note 7 units sold so far. The fix would entail a simple swap of the battery, the official said, and Samsung will be coming up with a list of ways for customers to have their Galaxy Note 7 smartphones checked and fixed, if needed.
The Galaxy Note 7 has been launched so far in 10 countries, with Samsung saying that demand has exceeded the company's expectations. Samsung was looking forward to the Galaxy Note 7 pulling up the company's profits for the latter part of this year, but with the global recall, the South Korean company's future once again looks bleak.
