Samsung on Sunday announced that it will start selling a refurbished version of its Galaxy Note7 smartphone this week. The company was forced to recall and stop the manufacture of the controversial smartphone last year after several incidents of exploding batteries were reported.
The electronics major now plans to sell a total of four lakh units of the refurbished mobile, which has been named the Galaxy Note7 Fan Edition. The limited-edition phone will hit shelves in South Korea on July 7 and will only be sold in South Korea for now, reported AFP.
The devices will be fitted with 3,200 mAh batteries, which Samsung said had passed strict safety tests. The original Note7 had used 3,500 mAh batteries, reported BBC.
The firm said in a statement that it would decide later whether to release the refurbished edition elsewhere. The smartphone has been priced at 6,99,000 won or $610 domestically, which is far lower than the the cost of the previous version.
The refurbished device is made of recalled, unsealed Note7 handsets. The unused components were outfitted with new batteries, Samsung said.
It was earlier reported that Samsung would sell around three million units of the Galaxy Note7 phones by trying to salvage parts of the recalled handsets. However, the company was then unsure of where these refurbished phones would be sold.
About three million Galaxy Note7 handsets were returned to the firm last year. The recall not only cost the world’s largest smartphone maker billions of dollars, its global reputation also took a major hit. Investigations had found that the devices has caught fire because of a manufacturing fault in the battery.
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