Samsung rushed Note7 replacement, debated ignoring early concerns, report says

The tragic saga of the Samsung Galaxy Note7 has come to an end, but in the aftermath, new details have emerged that reveal more about how the company fumbled what turned into the biggest smartphone failure ever.

Not only was the internal team conflicted about how to handle the rapidly escalating Note7 crisis, but a key decision appears to have been responsible for Samsung's eventual decision to cancel the device's replacement program, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

In general, much of the information revealed covers a narrative familiar to those who followed the product disaster in real time, but this new report offers a new perspective from inside the secretive confines of Samsung's executive inner circle.

Citing sources familiar with the matter, the report claims that, initially, there was internal debate at the company's South Korea headquarters on how to handle the reports of exploding Note7's, with some assuming the reports were no big deal, while others urged swift action.

Eventually, according to the report, Samsung's head of mobile, D.J. Koh, and other company insiders, including J.K. Shin and G.S. Choi, examined X-ray and CT scans of the phone, which appeared to show heat damage to the device's battery.

Afterward, Koh and Samsung executive Lee Jae-yong decided that Samsung SDI’s batteries were the source of the trouble and quickly announced its own Note7 recall, rather than wait for more conclusive proof of the cause of the explosions. That was later followed by a CPSC-backed recall and replacement program.

As we now know, those replacement Note7 devices did not solve the problem, as users with replacement smartphones began reporting explosions as well.

In the weeks that followed, pressure mounted and the report claims that telecoms executives, including a Verizon official, privately pleaded with Samsung to take the Note7 off the market. One executive even told Samsung that the smartphone was "becoming increasingly unsalable."

The final decision to end tech debacle came on Oct. 11, when the report claims that Lee called Koh and told him to take the smartphone off the market.

Now that the Note7 is officially dead, Samsung is already hard at work on its next smartphone, a device some expect to be called the Galaxy S8, likely to be released in the first part of 2017.

But after such a historic product flameout, Samsung will have to do a lot more than introduce an array of cool new features to win consumer trust back.