Months after the announcement, Samsung is bringing its most controversial smartphone, the Note7 back in South Korea. The refurbished model is being called “Note7 Fan Edition” and will be available for purchase starting from this month’s 7th at a price of 699,600 won ($611) which is 30 percent lower than the original Note7.
Apart from employing a series of new stringent tests and precautions, the new Note7 features a relatively smaller 3200mAh battery. The company further mentioned that it will be selling 400,000 phones, all of which utilize components extracted from defective unused Note7 handsets. Samsung also says that it’s put the Galaxy Note Fan Edition’s battery through an 8-point safety check to prevent it from overheating and well, exploding, unlike the previous version.
A few months ago, Samsung elaborated how it plans to recycle and said the process will involve determining what components such as camera modules and semiconductors should be restored, in association with “eco-friendly” third-party organizations.
Other than that, though, the new Galaxy Note7 comes with similar specifications which consist of a 5.7-inch Quad HD display, IP68 certification, S-pen functionality, octa-core processor, 4 gigs of RAM, fingerprint and an iris scanner as well. The camera arrangement includes a 12-megapixel f/1.7 rear lens and a front-facing 5-megapixel f/1.7 shooter. The phone will also feature Samsung’s Bixby voice assistant, Bixby vision and everything else they added on the Galaxy S8 series.
For the uninitiated, last year, Samsung’s Galaxy Note7 led to harsh accidents due to significant faults in its battery. Despite executing a massive global recall, the smartphone giant couldn’t figure out the precise issues hindering the internals and eventually, had to shut it down altogether. It will be interesting to see how they make a comeback at this point with the Galaxy Note7.
Moreover, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is also expected to launch in less than two months at IFA with a much steeper price tag and a set of cameras on the back.
Samsung Galaxy Note7 FE specifications
- 5.7-inch Quad HD, 518ppi, Super AMOLED, Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection
- Octa-Core Exynos 8890 (2.3GHz Quad + 1.6GHz Quad), 64 bit, 14 nm processor
- 4GB LPDDR4 RAM, 64GB (UFS 2.0) internal memory, expandable memory up to 256GB with microSD
- Android Nougat
- Dual SIM (nano+nano/microSD), 4G LTE Cat.12, Wi-Fi 802.11ac (2X2 MIMO), Bluetooth 4.2 LE, NFC, USB Type-C
- Rear Camera: 12MP, LED Flash, dual-pixel PDAF, Smart OIS, f/1.7 aperture
- Front Camera: 5MP, f/1.7 aperture
- IP68 rated, S Pen stylus
- Heart rate sensor, Fingerprint sensor, Iris scanner
- 3200 mAh battery with fast charging