Today Samsung officially gave the world the results of their investigation on why their flagship phablet, the Galaxy Note 7, randomly caught fire. We’ve gone into detail about it here, but in case you’re not a fan of back-reading, it all boils down to battery design and rushed production of the supposedly safe batteries for the replacement phones.
Read:
Samsung Officially Releases Findings On Note 7 Explosions
Aside from accepting full responsibility for the debacle, the Korean company has also learned quite a bit from their humbling experience, and have implemented a new, 8-step battery check for all of the batteries that they will use on their future phones.
Now that the Korean company has managed to pinpoint the points of failures for their flagship phablet, the obvious question remains: should they resume production of the Galaxy Note 7?
Speaking as someone who reviewed the device when it was initially unveiled last year, I think the Note 7 is still the best big phone that we’ve ever tested. Despite leaving the door wide open for a big-screen phablet from an established competitor to take advantage of Samsung’s rare stumble, there hasn’t been a phablet that approaches the level of the Galaxy Note 7’s polish. Huawei’s Mate 9 is pretty close (and you’ll see in our review that’s set to be published soon), but Huawei’s offering was launched a little too late to take advantage of that vacuum in the market.
Should Samsung re-launch the Galaxy Note 7? More importantly, will people still buy it after the well publicized problems it has endured in the past? I think that’s a big yes – there are still people stubbornly holding onto unsafe Galaxy Note 7’s in the wild despite Samsung’s calls to have those phones replaced/refunded, which speaks volumes of the phone’s appeal to customers.
If Samsung does decide to re-issue the Galaxy Note 7 with the lessons that they’ve learned in the past few months, the biggest hurdle won’t be with consumers – it’ll be with governments and airlines. How do you convince regulators that the phone that’s been exploding in the past is now, finally safe? How do you convince airlines to let on passengers with devices that they’ve considered safety hazards on their precious planes?
What do you think? Should Samsung start selling the Galaxy Note 7 again?
