November 22, 2024

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[THE INVESTOR] Samsung Electronics' mobile chief Koh Dong-jin said on Jan. 23 that the upcoming flagship smartphone Galaxy S8 will not be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress, the telecom industry’s largest gathering held in Barcelona in February.

“We are finalizing the unveiling schedule of the S8 but we will not unveil the phone at MWC,” he said at a press conference in Seoul announcing the probe results of the fire-prone Galaxy Note 7.

“We have greatly disappointed consumers causing their inconvenience. Our duty is to regain trust from consumers with a drastically upgraded Galaxy S8,” he added. 

Samsung's mobile chief Koh Dong-jin

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In its probe results, Samsung blamed faulty batteries for overheating and explosions of the recalled Note phone. The announcement comes more than three months after the Korean tech giant discontinued the phone, costing US$5.3 billion in operating profit.

“We asked our battery suppliers to improve battery capacity but didn’t properly inspect their functions before the phone’s launch. The ultimate responsibility is ours,” Koh said, declining to specify the names and defects of the batteries.

He added its investigation team could not find defects in other factors, including hardware such as rapid charging, water resistance design and iris recognition technology to software and logistics issues.

Since the phone’s global recall issued on Oct. 11, 2016, Samsung has poured all-out efforts to find the exact cause of several fires. About 700 Samsung researchers and engineers replicated the incidents by testing more than 200,000 devices and 30,000 batteries.

The probe was also joined by several independent expert organizations, including UL, Exponent and TUV Rheinland.

By Lee Ji-yoon and Kim Young-won
(jylee@heraldcorp.com) (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)