The ultimate fate of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is perfectly apt
Samsung's infamous Galaxy Note 7 has a new job: Battery security guard.
As Samsung took me and some other journalists on a tour of the company's smartphone factory and battery testing facility in Gumi, just outside of Seoul, South Korea, we saw several parts of the company's new eight-point battery check, created in the wake of the Note 7 debacle and subsequent recall.
One of these is the charging/discharging test, which does exactly what it says. Rows and rows of Galaxy S8 phones, each with a USB cable connected, alternately charge up and charge down, as cameras look on.
But those cameras are actually smartphones, and those smartphones – at least the ones in Gumi – happen to be Galaxy Note 7's. It's hard to tell in the pic (Samsung only allowed their own photography in the factory), but those are Note 7 phones hanging above.
When I examined one of the Notes, it said the battery was charged to 100%, which made me raise an eyebrow, since Samsung pushed out a number of updates throughout the world that limited the amount of charge the phone could store.
After Samsung US reps looked into it, they told me the Note 7's in the factory were using a different, lower-capacity battery. That actually makes sense: Because the phones are plugged into power all the time, overall capacity is irrelevant. Perhaps a version of that modified battery may make its way into the refurbished version of the Note 7, but it's too early to say.
It's a apt fate for the troubled phone: The Note 7, responsible for the biggest disaster in the history of Samsung phones, now stands guard in the company's factories against future battery problems. You can almost hear it whisper, "Don't let this happen to you, kids."
Topics Samsung
Pete Pachal was Mashable’s Tech Editor and had been at the company from 2011 to 2019. He covered the technology industry, from self-driving cars to self-destructing smartphones.Pete has covered consumer technology in print and online for more than a decade. Originally from Edmonton, Canada, Pete first uploaded himself into technology journalism at Sound & Vision magazine in 1999. Pete also served as Technology Editor at Syfy, creating the channel's technology site, DVICE (now Blastr), out of some rusty HTML code and a decompiled coat hanger. He then moved on to PCMag, where he served as the site's News Director.Pete has been featured on Fox News, the Today Show, Bloomberg, CNN, CNBC and CBC.Pete holds degrees in journalism from the University of King's College in Halifax and engineering from the University of Alberta in Edmonton. His favorite Doctor Who monsters are the Cybermen.
