Samsung is to be congratulated for swiftly moving to issue a recall for its flagship Galaxy Note7 smartphone.
When something goes wrong, you really only have two options.
Your first option is to ignore it and hope it goes away while you sweep things under the carpet.
Your second option is to acknowledge the issue, admit there’s been some kind of failing, and promise to fix it as quickly as possible.
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After 35 reports of Note7 batteries exploding over a few days, Samsung absolutely did the right thing and issued a global recall.
In Australia, this means offering to repair the device, replace it with a new one, or refund the customer their money, and as seen in Samsung Australia’s statement to the media two daya ago, that’s exactly what they’re going to do.
With reports of 50,000 Note7 devices sold in Australia, and 2.5 million sold the world over, and who knows how many more in transit or in storerooms at telcos and telco stores - the recall won’t be cheap for Samsung.
But what price a company’s reputation, and what price needed to pay to compensate owners if a battery explosion led to loss of property by fire, or loss of life, unlikely though that would be?
Of course, death by smartphone has happened before, with my most recent memory of this being in 2014, although it wasn’t precisely the smartphone’s fault.
A dodgy, unauthorised USB charger was to blame in that case, plugged into a phone by its USB cable, which had earphones plugged into it. A laptop was also plugged into the same power point and somehow it appears the devices, though the faulty USB charger, sent a big enough shock to electrocute a person, which is sadly what happened.
So, the question is what you do now with your Note7 if you have one?
Well, as you can see from the link a few paragraphs above, Samsung Australia has issued a statement, which ended with the words: “We will have an update for Australian customers early next week.”
The company also said: “we will provide a resolution of their choice including a replacement, repair or refund over the coming weeks.”
Now, while the risk of an explosion is presumably low, with only 35 reports out of 2.5 million devices, the fact that Samsung in its statement “… we conducted a thorough investigation and found a battery cell issue”, the advice from me is clear.
Save all the data on your Note7 to your computer or some online service - your contacts, your photos, notes and anything else you can backup - and then remove the SIM card and MicroSD card from your Note7.
Once you are satisfied you have backed everything up, you may wish to perform a factory reset so your Note7 is back to its original factory-fresh state, and pack it back up in its box until you hear from Samsung on what to do next to get your phone replaced, repaired or refunded.
Then you can put your SIM card into your old phone, or a spare. If you don’t have an old phone or a spare then you can buy Android phones from $99 if needed, just as a holdover. One of your friends might have a spare old phone to lend you for a few weeks.
Once your SIM card is safely in a different phone, you can make and receive calls again, check your email and do whatever else it is you do with your phone.
You’ll then have to wait a few weeks until Samsung fixes the battery cell issue and starts cranking up the production lines again with Note7’s free from the battery cell issue flaw.
And that’s that! It’s now just a waiting game for Samsung to get new Note7’s onto the market. No doubt the company is working as hard and fast as it can to safely recommence Note7 production and get units back into people’s hands.
The only thing I can think of at this point is that whoever at Samsung HQ in Korea that was responsible for testing the batteries is probably feeling very flat at the moment, but we hope that person can take a break, recharge and avoid being explosively fired - instead learning from the lesson to ensure such an issue never happens again.
