Samsung has probably experienced its biggest loss in 2016 as it recalled and ultimately stopped the production and distribution of its flagship phone Samsung Galaxy Note 7 in the fourth quarter of this year. Since it was released in August, there had been continuous reports of the units overheating and catching fire from various users all over the world.
Seeing this as a problem, the company decided to recall all their initially released units to investigate the cause of the issue. Investigations showed that its faulty design caused the batteries to overheat and damage other parts of the phone's internal systems. Such a discovery has pushed the company to recall all units and fully stop production and distribution.
So the question now is: what will Samsung do to its recalled units? If Samsung makes the wrong move, its disposal could be an environmental disaster. There are actually a variety of options out there. The company has an option to find out the fault in its design and ultimately repair the units. However, according to an interview with Motherboard, Samsung has specifically indicated that the units will not be recycled, refurbished, or resold in the future. This means it has only one option -- which is actually the most recommended by experts -- to recycle their units. All the phones combined will have more than 500,000 kilograms of high-end technology that can be recycled or even reused.
According to a report from the Treehugger, since the phone was the most sophisticated phone ever created by far, it surely has technology and raw materials that other phones have less of. Each unit has a certain amount of precious metals which could be extracted and recycled on their future units.
However, Samsung has not confirmed this yet, and they are still looking for ways on how to properly dispose of the phones. They have not clarified how they are going to do it and what other options they have for all the units which have been recalled.