Goodbye Galaxy Note 7 — we hardly knew ye.
After a rather dispiriting series of fires due to a faultily designed battery unit, Samsung has announced it will permanently pull the Galaxy Note 7 phone from the market — the premium phone couldn’t quite get a hold in the market without exploding.
In a filing with South Korean regulators, Samsung said it would permanently cease sales of the device, a day after it announced a temporary halt to production of the smartphones.
Samsung’s trouble first started about a month ago when it was forced to recall 2.5 million Note 7 phones after it was discovered that the phone’s battery unit had an unfortunate tendency to overheat and catch fire. The recall, however, really only made things worse when it came out last week that at least 4 of the replacement Note phones had actually also caught on fire. In the recalled exploders batch was a phone that ignited moments before the airplane it was on actually left the ground, one belonging to a 13-year-old child and one that sent its owner to the hospital with smoke inhalation injuries.
In the aftermath of all of that — and its choice to temporarily halt production on the Note — Samsung shares tumbled 8 percent, its biggest one-day decline in eight years.
“Taking our customer’s safety as our highest priority, we have decided to halt sales and production of the Galaxy Note 7,” the company said.