According to an internal memo that was acquired by The Verge, Samsung has temporarily paused all shipments of replacement units of the Galaxy Note 7 to Australian carrier Telstra, showing that Samsung is enforcing a supply shutdown of the controversial smartphones to at least one of its partner companies.
The report comes amid escalating reports of replacement Galaxy Note 7 smartphones still catching fire, seemingly as the defects in the batteries found in the original batch are still present in the new units.
Telstra, as The Verge reported, was still in the stage of acquiring replacement units from Samsung for the Galaxy Note 7. All the replacement units that the carrier has so far received have been used in the recall program, with Telstra not yet having reached the point of being able to sell the Galaxy Note 7 to new customers. The smartphone, in fact, is nowhere to be found on the online store of Telstra.
According to the memo to the carrier, while Samsung has temporarily paused the supply of replacement Galaxy Note 7 smartphones following an incident of one such unit exploding in the United States, the company remains to be confident in the replacement devices.
How long Samsung's confidence in the replacement Galaxy Note 7 smartphones will remain, however, remains to be seen. After launching a worldwide global recall program upon reports of exploding batteries, the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco is still not over, as the replacement devices do not seem to have fixed the problem.
One of the cases wherein a replacement Galaxy Note 7 still caught fire involved Michael Klering from Kentucky, who woke up in the middle of the night with his bedroom filled with smoke due to the smartphone burning up.
Klering, who started to vomit black later in the day due to inhaling the smoke generated by the burning Galaxy Note 7, also apparently received a text message from a representative of Samsung that was clearly not intended for him.
"Just now got this. I can try and slow him down if we think it will matter, or we just let him do what he keeps threatening to do and see if he does it," the message said.
It is difficult to jump to conclusions, but the insinuation of the text message paints the entire Galaxy Note 7 situation with an even darker coating.
Galaxy Note 7 owners should definitely start thinking about their safety and instead have their smartphone replaced with their carrier. All four major carriers within the United States have offered their customers to replace the beleaguered smartphone with any other device.
With Samsung already stopping the supply of the replacement Galaxy Note 7 to Telstra, will the company do the same for other carriers worldwide? For the safety of their customers, it should definitely think about it.
