Samsung will reportedly sell “refurbished” Galaxy Note 7 devices that were globally recalled last year after the phones were found to cause battery fires, Korean outlet Hankyung said.
The refurbished devices will reportedly come with new cases and a smaller low-capacity battery. The new Note 7 battery will have a capacity between 3,000 and 3,200mAh, compared to its previous 3,500mAh battery.
So far, the company has recovered 98 percent of the 3.6 million Note 7 phones sold worldwide. Out of the retrieved devices, 200,000 were used tested to identify the cause of the battery fires. Samsung now has 2.5 million units left.
The refurbished phones could be sold as early as June 2017, but are not expected to be sold in the U.S. and Europe. The devices will be available “mainly in emerging markets such as India and Vietnam,” according to Hankyung.
The company hopes to recover some losses with the refurbished phones, the report said.
The Galaxy Note 7 failure cost $5.3 billion in operating profit. After the Note 7 issues, Samsung suffered its worst decline in smartphone sales, according to tech research firm Gartner. Samsung smartphone sales fell in the third quarter of 2016 by 14.2 percent year over year, the company’s worst performance ever.
Samsung blamed the Note 7 problems on battery suppliers Samsung SDI Co Ltd and China’s Amperex Technology Ltd.
Samsung is expected to reveal two new models this year, the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus. The Samsung devices, Galaxy S8 and S8+, are rumored to come with AI assistant Bixby, which will directly compete with Apple’s Siri. The company has nearly doubled the first shipments of its upcoming Galaxy S8 devices compared to the Galaxy S7, a recent report said.
Samsung is expected to reveal a new high-end tablet, Tab 3, during its appearance at the Mobile World Congress later this month.
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