Remember those Galaxy Note 7 units that Samsung collected after two rounds of recalls? The ones that came with fire-prone batteries? Well, it turns out that Samsung will not recycle them by turning them into safe Galaxy Note FE units. Instead, Samsung is going to strip them of resources, and recoup some 157 tons of materials from the now-seriously dead Galaxy Note 7.
A new report from The Korea Herald explains that Samsung wants to recycle the recalled Galaxy Note 7 phablets in environmentally friendly ways. That’s hardly news. Samsung has to recycle the handsets or face some serious fines. And we thought the best way for Samsung to recycle all those phones was to equip them with new batteries and a processor and sell them as the Note FE.
It turns out that’s not the case. And that is interesting news.
The report says that Samsung wants to recycle OLED display modules, memory chips, and cameras, and sell other key parts. It’s unclear if any of these parts will go into Galaxy Note FE models.
The recycling effort will help Samsung collect up to 157 tons of resources, including gold, silver, and copper.
Samsung collected some 3 million Galaxy Note 7 units after the last recall and used more than 200,000 of devices for testing purposes while investigating the battery fire incidents. It soon faced pressure from environmental groups that were asking for Samsung to recycle the unused devices in an eco-friendly manner.
Samsung, meanwhile, is ready to commit to improving its recycling practices in the future. “Samsung Electronics will continue to expand adopting environmentally friendly methods to collect and process older devices, as well as manufacturing new products,” the company said in a statement.
