A few months ago, it seemed that Samsung Mobile will end the year on a really high note, so to speak. Unfortunately for the South Korean smartphone maker, the Galaxy Note 7 launch turned out to be quite a disaster. Yes, Samsung Galaxy is a huge brand that’s simply too big to fail just because of one faulty device but few will argue that this entire ordeal won’t have long-term consequences for the tech giant.
The fact that initial units of Samsung’s phablet were liable to catching fire and exploding was obviously bad, but what followed presented Samsung in a really bad light. Namely, after two weeks of investigating initial reports and scanning destroyed units, the company announced that it has identified a battery cell defect present in batteries produced by its subsidiary Samsung SDI. The smartphone maker was quick to issue replacement units and resume Galaxy Note 7 sales worldwide following that announcement but as new models proved to be just as dangerous as their predecessors, it became obvious that batteries weren’t the cause of reported fires. The company had no choice but to issue an unprecedented second recall and permanently halt production of the Galaxy Note 7, which certainly wasn’t great for the Samsung Galaxy brand value. Couple that with numerous accusations about a lack of transparency and questionable quality assurance practices and you have a fully-fledged PR disaster at your hands. Well, Samsung does.
However, it seems that this fiasco won’t just affect the company’s Samsung Galaxy Note brand. As things stand right now, an ongoing investigation into the issue is now directly delaying development of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S8. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, the tech giant recently decided to halt Galaxy S8 development for two whole weeks. The company is allegedly hoping to finally identify the issue with its latest phablet in the meantime so that it can be sure that its upcoming flagship doesn’t suffer from the same defect. Regardless of whether this investigation is successfully completed by next month or not, the Samsung Galaxy S8 will still in all likelihood be revealed on February 26th. There’s not much to do now but hope that the South Korean tech giant learns from this unfortunate episode because another fiasco of this magnitude simply cannot happen.