Samsung Undecided About Galaxy Note 7 Disposal, Recycling

Samsung Electronics has not yet decided the mode of disposing all Galaxy Note 7s in an attempt to put an end to the disaster of the phone’s release.

“Because Galaxy Note 7 is a smartphone that is discontinued already, it will be hard for us to recycle it as a finished product,” said a high-ranking official for Samsung Electronics.

“Considering the design of our next product, there is almost zero chance that we will recycle components such as display and others of Galaxy Note 7,” ET News writes.

It is estimated that Samsung Electronics had produced 4.3 million Galaxy Note 7s. It had produced 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7s until the first recall and produced additional 1.8 million of them afterwards.

Samsung Electronics was actively looking into selling refurbished Galaxy Note 7s in developing countries such as Africa and others during the first recall, but when the next batch started igniting, that plan was shelved.

Its plan was to introduce Galaxy Note 7 at a lower price in countries where low- and medium-priced phones are more popular and increase the value of premium smartphones through improvement of their images.

“We are going to examine ways of utilizing Galaxy Note 7s as refurbished phones,” said Department Head Ko Dong-jin of Samsung Electronics’ Wireless Business Department during the first recall that happened on 2nd September.

However, this plan came to nothing when Samsung Electronics could not find the precise causes of ignition of Galaxy Note 7 and decided on discontinuation of Galaxy Note 7.

“Discussion regarding sales of Galaxy Note 7s as refurbished phones was very active because Samsung Electronics had believed that replacement of batteries would solve the problem,” a high-ranking official for a mobile network provider said.

“However, because Samsung Electronics still does not know the exact causes of ignition even after it has discontinued sales of Galaxy Note 7s, it did not discuss anything about post-process internally.”

Even though Samsung Electronics will go through a process of disposition of all Galaxy Note 7s, it will not hold a “burning ceremony” in public. However, Samsung Electronics still needs to figure out ways to solve environment pollution that will be caused when Galaxy Note 7s are disposed.

“There is a zero chance that Samsung Electronics will collect all 4.3 million Galaxy Note 7s at once,” said an industry representative. “There is a higher chance that it will collect them sequentially in the future.”