Samsung’s problems with the Galaxy Note 7 just keep getting worse. Since recalling the faulty smartphone last month, several replacement Galaxy Note 7s have caught on fire. The company is now asking consumers to immediately turn off and replace even their replacement Galaxy Note 7s for a different phone entirely.
So if you still own a Galaxy Note 7, it’s time to ditch it. This applies no matter how recently you got it. Per Samsung’s statement: “Since the affected devices can overheat and pose a safety risk, we are asking consumers with an original Galaxy Note 7 or a replacement Galaxy Note 7 to power it down and contact the carrier or retail outlet where you purchased your Galaxy Note 7.”
Over the weekend, all four of the major U.S. phone carriers – Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon – announced they stopped selling the phone and are offering exchanges for other models. Best Buy also announced they are doing the same.
Samsung is also suspending production of the Galaxy Note 7 in the light of the new incidents, according to Korean news agency Yonhap. The halt is said to be in cooperation with safety regulators in the U.S., China, and Korea.
In the meantime, Samsung and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) are investigating the recent cases of replacement phones catching on fire. You can find an updated list of the reported incidents provided by Ars Technica here.
Just last week, a Southwest Airlines flight was evacuated while on the ground in Louisville when a passenger’s replacement phone caught on fire. The CPSC said they are “moving expeditiously to investigate this incident” but haven’t yet made a final call on whether the new phones are safe or not.
In Samsung’s original recall, the company said you could replace your original Galaxy Note 7 with a new version of the same. That language is gone now and if you want to stick with the Samsung brand, your only options are the Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 edge.
But after endangering lives in a fiasco that’s already dragged on over a month, consumers will understandably show some reservation about betting on Samsung again. And with the recent launch of Apple’s iPhone 7 and the upcoming release of Google’s new Pixel phone, Consumers will have some options in front of them for flagship phones that don’t come with a high risk of explosion.
