SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – Samsung will issue a global recall of the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone as soon as this weekend after its investigation on explosion claims found batteries were at fault, according to South Korea’s Yonhap News.
Samsung Electronics refused comment on the report on Friday, September 2.
It said it was conducting the inspection with its partners.
“We will share the findings as soon as possible. Samsung is fully committed to providing the highest quality products to our consumers,” the company said in a statement.
The company was due to hold a news conference later Friday about the findings of its investigation and plans for the Galaxy Note 7.
Samsung launched the Note 7 on August 19 in some markets, including South Korea and the US.
Shipments were delayed in South Korea this week for extra quality control testing after reports that batteries of some of the jumbo smartphones exploded while they were being charged.
South Korean high school teacher Park Soo-Jung said she rushed to buy the Galaxy Note 7, pre-ordering and then activating it on August 19, its official launch date.
The 34-year-old living in the port city of Busan said by email that she was bruised when she rushed out of bed after her phone burst into flames, filling her bedroom with smoke smelling of chemicals.
Park said she’s having second thoughts about buying another newly released tech gadget, especially after losing all her personal data stored in the destroyed Note 7.
An employee of a Samsung service center in Busan who visited Park’s school to retrieve the scorched phone confirmed that her Galaxy Note 7 caught fire and said the sample was sent to the company’s headquarters.
Park said Samsung offered her a full refund and compensation of 300,000 won ($269). She did not accept the compensation.
“If the exploded phone in flame was near my head, I would not have been able to write this post,” she said in a popular online forum on Thursday, September 1, where she shared a photo of the scorched Note 7 and described dousing the burning phone with water.
Citing an unnamed company official, Yonhap said Samsung’s investigation has found that faulty batteries have caused phones to catch fire. (AP)