Samsung: Over 96% of Galaxy Note7 phones returned to date

Samsung said today that over 96 percent of all Galaxy Note7 phones have been returned following a recall that started in September.

First introduced in August, the latest Note7 smartphone received positive reviews until reports surfaced that some devices caught fire after their batteries exploded. After a “thorough inspection” of its phones, Samsung opted to issue a mandatory recall, but only after the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued its own recall notice.

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In October, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) banned passengers from bringing the Note7 on board any aircraft, even if the device had been powered down. This restriction applied to all flights in the U.S. and was in response to a Note7 exploding after a passenger boarded a Southwest Airlines flight in October.

If you’ve boarded a plane in the past several months, you may have heard flight attendants warning that if you had a Note7, you could not bring it aboard the plane. But Samsung claims that because of the “exceptionally high rates of participation” in the recall, the U.S. Department of Transportation no longer requires airlines to issue specific pre-boarding notifications.

Achieving a 96 percent return rate took about four months, but it wasn’t all done organically, as Samsung revealed in December that it would issue a software update to permanently disable charging on the outstanding Note7s. Until that point, the company had received 85 percent of affected devices.

During the Consumer Electronics Show last week, Samsung America’s president and chief operating officer, Tim Baxter, made reference to the Note7 at the opening of the company’s keynote, saying that Samsung would release a report about what had happened to the device “very soon.” He said, however, that the electronics maker remains undeterred and will not stop “nor will we stop innovating.”