Samsung makes battery icon Note 7 green with ‘safe’ copies

Samsung makes the color of the battery icon on the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone green if it is a copy without risk of explosion. On the original version of the phone, the icon is white. The manufacturer has now recalled the device in the US.

Samsung produced a total of 2.5 million units of the Note 7 before recalling the phone. To distinguish between the ones that are at risk of explosion and the new ones that shouldn’t, in a new firmware the battery icon will be green instead of white.

Analysts suggest to ZDNet that Samsung should make a name change, for example to Note 7S. In this way it would be clearer to consumers that it is a new, safer copy. There is an S on the packaging of the new copies.

Although Samsung called on customers who bought the phone two weeks ago to return the phone, it is now for the first time in the United States about a mandatory recall via the American CPSC. So far, 130,000 of the million copies sold have returned. 92 incidents have been reported.

The case got rolling a few weeks ago, when the first incidents surfaced. A manufacturing defect in some batteries can cause the cathode to come into contact with the anode, resulting in an explosion. This occasionally happens with phones due to manufacturing errors, but with the Note 7 it is much more common than average. In the meantime, incidents have also been reported with a Galaxy S7 Edge, Galaxy Core Prime and devices from other manufacturers, but in all cases it seems to be only incidents and not a manufacturing defect resulting in tens to hundreds of accidents.

The Note 7 has not yet been released in the Benelux. That will probably happen when Samsung has completely replaced the first batch with new ones and has enough stock for the countries where it was already in stores. Samsung has not yet made a statement about a release in the Benelux, but web stores will keep it on October.