Samsung is refurbishing its Note7 smartphone for sale in South Korea from June, at approx US$266 less than when it launched – and with a smaller battery.
Once destined for the scrap heap, Samsung is taking 300,000 of the approximately four million returned Note7 units that didn’t explode, putting in a smaller battery, and putting them back on sale.
Samsung did state these models would not return for sale or rent in the US market, and told this to The Verge, but if sales are popular in South Korea, and then presumably they will be also sold in other parts of the world. Who knows where they might end up in the future.
After all, there are millions of the Note7 devices left, but the world is a big place with billions of people – perhaps the Note7 will end up in India, other parts of Asia and other places where refurbished models can be sold.
{loadposition alex08}The news comes courtesy of South Korea’s Electronic ‘ET News’ (Google Translated copy here, original Korean here), and via SamMobile here.
The original Note7 had a 3500mAh battery, and the new model is said to have a battery from 3000 to 3200mAh in size.
You’d imagine the R in the renamed Galaxy Note7 R name would stand for "Refurbished", but ET News says this stands for the word "Ripper".
This may well be a word that is lost in translation – unless Samsung is suggesting it will have ripper sales of a rip-roaring refurbished device.
All eyes will be on how well the Note7 R is received in South Korea, and whether any reports of battery issues or worse emerge, or whether things are so smooth as to be completely normal.
After all, Samsung has put forth its eight-point battery plan, and has done extensive tests to ensure its batteries won’t explode again, so the expectation is there’ll be no issues this time.
Whether any refurbished Note7 R units will ever come to Australia is unknown, but if they aren’t due to ever be sold or rented in the US, we’ll probably never see them again here, either.
In the end, the Note7 was a very nice phone, and arguably the very best stylus-equipped smartphone, so if it truly has been made absolutely safe, its owners should be very happy.