It’s recently been rumored that Samsung announced at the end of last week, that it is to set up a compensation program that will allow customers of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 who exchanged the device for the Samsung Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 Edge device to upgrade to next year’s Samsung Galaxy S8 “without paying much.” The new Samsung Galaxy S8 is potentially going to be released in March 2017 and the amount that the Galaxy Note 7 owners will pay is reckoned to depend on if the Galaxy Note 7 was replaced with the Galaxy S7 device on either the first or second recall. A Samsung spokesperson said: “The new compensation program is designed to make it easier for those who exchange their Galaxy Note 7 with existing Samsung smartphones, to shift into our next model coming in next year.”
The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was originally unveiled in August. Within a few weeks of the device going on sale, customers started complaining that the device was catching fire or exploding when on charge. Samsung investigated the issue and arranged for the device to be recalled and replaced with a newly made Galaxy Note 7. Because this is the first Note smartphone with an embedded, non-user replaceable battery, Samsung had to manufacture new smartphones and ship these out to customers. Unfortunately, only a few days after the replaced Galaxy Note 7 phones were in the hands of customers, reports started coming in that the replacement Galaxy Note 7 devices were also catching fire. Samsung conceded that there was a serious problem with the battery used in the handset, recalled all devices and either issued full or partial refunds together with a replacement Samsung device for customers.
Samsung is already subsidizing its existing devices – in effect, paying customers, as the Galaxy Note 7 was Samsung’s most expensive device – in order to encourage them to stick with a Samsung device after the Galaxy Note 7 was removed from sale. The South Korean conglomerate is keen to reassure consumers that it’s devices are safe and that the problems with the Samsung Galaxy Note 7’s battery were isolated to this particular model. However, the company has not provided details of how the upgrade or replacement scheme is going to work. We will have to wait and see how customers will react as the Galaxy Note family of devices is considered to be subtly different to the Galaxy S line of devices.