Last year’s phablet kept catching fire, resulting in a costly recall. Will Note buyers forgive and forget?<\/b>
\nNEW YORK\u2014It’s been a question ever since last year’s ultimately recalled Samsung Galaxy Note 7 devices kept catching fire: Will customers come back for more?
Samsung is set to unveil a brand-new Galaxy Note 8 at a New York City event in late August, according to Reuters and South Korea publication The Bell. Following a tradition of August updates to the Note line \u2014 and jumping ahead of the anticipated iPhone 8 launch in September \u2014 the new phone is expected to have a slightly larger display than the Samsung Galaxy S8+’s 6.2-inch display and sport two rear cameras.
Last fall’s brand-damaging and expensive ($5.3 billion-plus) recall of the popular Note 7, caused by batteries in the device that overheated, would have seemed to put the nail into the Note coffin. The repeat recall followed weeks of reports on consumers burned, jolted awake or surprised in mid-air by phones smoking and catching fire. But Samsung’s mobile chief had vowed to bring back a better, safer Note 8.
\u201cSamsung is undoubtedly moving cautiously with the next Note 8 \u2014 it cannot afford a repeat of the Note 7. But I would argue that the company has moved on, and consumers are likely to trust that the new phone will not explode, \u201d said tech analyst Avi Greengart, a research director at GlobalData.
A representative for Samsung declined to comment for this report.
Samsung\u2019s Note customers have traditionally been its most loyal, and the company has repeatedly apologized for the Note 7 fiasco. In January, Samsung blamed design and manufacturing flaws associated with the phone\u2019s batteries (which were produced by the company\u2019s battery suppliers) on the problems. And Samsung implemented an 8-point battery safety check across the product line that included a durability test, visual inspection, x-ray test and other tests.
More recently Samsung brought out the S8 and S8+ smartphones, the company\u2019s first major flagship phones since the Note. There has been no repeat of the battery issues\u2014the phones underwent the 8-point safety check\u2014and the devices have been largely well received, even given delays with the voice features in Bixby, the company\u2019s new artificial intelligence-powered digital assistant.
Samsung has not only publicly committed to continuing the Note brand, but even recently released what it dubbed a \u201cremastered\u201d version of the Note 7 in South Korea to minimize the environmental impact of the recalled devices. And yes, these Note 7 Fan Edition devices, as they\u2019 re called, have new batteries that have also passed the 8-point safety check, along with reworked components from the original Note 7.
\u201cFrom everything I\u2019 ve seen since the issues last year started, perceptions of Samsung\u2019s products haven\u2019 t been affected all that dramatically, and especially among Samsung loyalists they\u2019 ve barely budged, \u201d said Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research.
But Dawson does see other potential barriers to Note 8 sales, notably potentially higher prices coupled with the fact that it is getting harder and harder for Samsung to differentiate between its phablet device and the S8 and S8+ .
\u201cThe Galaxy S8 phones arguably hit some of the same sweet spots the Note has historically occupied, with the really large beautiful screens in a more compact device, and so the Note has to stand out on either the stylus alone or some combination of other new features, \u201d he says.
Any new Note device will almost certainly include a version of the Samsung\u2019s souped-up stylus S Pen, just as predecessor Note models have\u2014the S8 and S8+ do not come with a stylus. But when it comes to screen size, consider that last year\u2019s Note 7 ($850 and up when released) had a 5.7-inch display; the S8 and S8+ ($720 and up) have 5.8 and 6.2-inch display sizes respectively.
\u201cOverall, whether the Note 8 looks like a compelling device for the price in its own right will be the single biggest factor in how it sells, “ says Dawson. „Not leftover worries from last year\u2019s fiasco.\u201d
Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow USA TODAY Personal Tech Columnist @edbaig on Twitter<\/p>\n

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Sentiment rank: 0.6<\/div>\n

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