In an attempt to recover the dented image of its flagship smartphone Note 7, Samsung is planning to sell refurbished Galaxy Note 7 handsets in India and Vietnam. The newly manufactured phones will be featuring a smaller battery.
As per the report by Korean news website Hankyung , the objective behind launching the tweaked version of phones is to minimise the heavy losses, while also trying to evade from environmental penalties.
There is no confirmation of the exact date of the launch, but the handsets could hit the market shelves as early as June. The new phones are expected to come with a new case and has core parts intact, while the battery has been down-sized to 3,000mAh from 3500mAh.
Will this make a good recovery?
Before the Note 7 fiasco, Samsung was top selling smartphone brand globally as per reports. However, the latter half of the year shuffled places, as Samsung lost its reputation owing to several Note 7 handsets explosion due to its ‘faulty’ battery.
According to the Harris poll, the South Korean smartphone giant was seen nose-diving to 49th position. However, Samsung did not witness a slump in its South Asian market. In fact, the company did not experience much difference after the demonetization policy while many other smartphone companies did.
The main idea behind Samsung launching the Note 7 handsets could perhaps be its tight grip in the South-Asian market.
As mentioned on the Hankyung report, anonymous sources said that there will be a bunch of them (Note 7) on sale, too. Samsung says it has recovered 98 percent of the 3.06 million it had originally flogged, 200,000 of which were used as guinea pigs in the firm’s investigation into the cause of the battery fires. This means there are around 2.5 million units left in inventory.
Maybe after the Note 7 handset market revives in India and Vietnam, Samsung will then focus on other emerging markets.
Reasons behind the phone fiasco
As per Samsung inquiry results, the two main flaws with Galaxy Note 7 batteries were two different manufacturing defects. The first battery had a design flaw was in the upper right corner that could cause a short circuit, while the second battery — used for replacement units — had a manufacturing issue that could lead to fires because of a welding defect. Some units of the second battery were also missing insulation tape.
Here is a question to our readers – would you buy a refurbished Note 7 if it was available for a decent price?
