Samsung halts Galaxy Note 7 sales, urges powering down

Samsung finally took the step that almost everyone, including major US carriers, have already done a day or two ago. The Korean company has announced that it is asking its partners, both carriers and retailers, to stop selling the cursed Galaxy Note 7. Even while Samsung claims that it is merely taking precautions while investigations are still ongoing, it is the closest we’ll get to an official statement acknowledging battery problems still present in the replacement Galaxy Note 7 units already exchanged or resold worldwide.

In fact, Samsung is urging owners of both originally defective units as well as still defective replacement units to power down their devices until the matter is fully resolved. Given how that was supposed to be fully resolved already, it isn’t clear if that will happen at all. Which is to say, Galaxy Note 7s will most likely be powered down indefinitely.

Carriers have a better alternative: exchange those smartphones for a completely different model. Anything from their catalogue other than the Galaxy Note 7. Die-hard Samsung fans can still choose the brand, probably a Galaxy S7 or S7 edge. And in most cases, carriers will let buyers keep their pre-order freebies, though a 2nd gen Gear VR without a Galaxy Note 7 might look lonely (there is a micro USB adapter though).

What Samsung hasn’t admitted yet, and it’s unlikely it ever will is whether it has really halted production of the Galaxy Note 7. The company is stuck between a rock and a hard place where it can neither move forward nor backward. Considering that situation, Samsung could try to “delay” matters long enough for the Galaxy S8 to break cover, which, according to latest sources, will happen in just four months.