Samsung is getting ready to recoup some of the costs, and diminish some of the environmental damage caused by last year’s recall of millions of Galaxy Note 7 smartphones.

After it was determined that some phones were catching fire due to battery issues, the company recalled the phone and worked with wireless carriers to remotely disable phones to keep them from exploding (and to keep owners from using unsafe phones).

Now Samsung plans to sell some refurbished models with smaller batteries and lower price tags.

At launch, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7R will only be available in Korea. Samsung is still evaluating whether to release the phone in other markets (which would be one of the reasons it showed up at the FCC website last week — but that doesn’t necessarily mean the phone will be available in the US anytime soon).

The refurbished model has a 3,200 mAh battery rather than a 3,500 mAh battery, as confirmed by photos of the Galaxy Note 7R in the wild. But that seems to be the only real change to the hardware. On the software side, the operating system has been updated to Android 7.0 (the Note 7 originally shipped with Android 6.0).

Samsung’s phone features a 5.7 inch, 2560 x 1440 pixel display with pen support, a Samsung Exynos 8890 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 12MP camera. While it was fire-prone, early reviews suggested it was one of the most powerful smartphones of 2016.

These days it has to compete with new models sporting 2017-era hardware, including Samsung’s own Galaxy S8 smartphone. So it makes sense that the company would give the phone a price cut. It still isn’t cheap though: the Note 7R is expected to sell for about $620 in South Korea.

Update: A recent report from The Investor suggests the price will be substantially lower, at about half the original cost of a Galaxy Note 7, which would be around $440.

Expect the starting price of the upcoming Galaxy Note 8 to be substantially higher.

via SamMobile

 

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7 replies on “Refurb Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones with smaller batteries launching in Korea soon”

  1. If they plan to go international with that same $620 baseline, well I can only say that probably those who’re clinically certified are gonna buy it since it’s gonna be level to an unlocked NEW S7 Edge 128GB???

    ffs who signed this off?

    1. Do you seriously not understand screen sizes? There are many more differences, but go look them up. Your ignorance on the issue is no excuse to question the mental stability of others.

  2. My question regarding this subject is a simple one: How will airlines deal with having to distinguish between these and the originals which are banned on almost any flight?

    1. The answer is simple, they won’t. The refurbished version of these things will be just as banned as the originals. An airline stewardess isn’t qualified to take the back off of the phone and tell whether the original “bomb in a case” model or the “supposedly not a bomb in a case” version so at least in the Western world both will be banned.

      1. it won’t be banned if it’s sold as the Note 7R, as it will be a different phone.

  3. smaller batteries and lower price tags is relative OC

    $620 for this Note 7 refit is a massive overprice, and while it may improve their losses per unit at this price, it’s not going to sell very well or help improve their corporate image id surmise…

    make it $250 and put a new flat quick charge super capacitor in there as a proof of concept for future models using https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertMurraySmith/videos IP for instance would be a far better PR and image builder for them…

  4. Probably shouldn’t use “launch” and “Korea” in the same headline. 😉

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