You would think that Samsung would by now be able to decipher what exactly made the Note 7 catch fire, but you would be wrong. Lithium ion batteries do have the potential to explode or spontaneously combust if something goes wrong inside and that was exactly what Samsung and everyone else thought the problem was. However, it was apparently not exactly what they thought it was. What the problem actually was, remains a mystery still today!

According to Samsung, "We recognized that we did not correctly identify the issue the first time and remain committed to finding the root cause."
"Our top priority remains the safety of our customers and retrieving 100% of the Galaxy Note 7 devices in the market."

Experts examining the smartphones and the scenarios are of the opinion that there could be multiple reasons responsible for the explosions and one of the potential culprits could be that the battery case that wasn't sufficiently big to accommodate the battery of the Note 7. A finer problem could lie in the software of the phone itself, which may have failed to direct battery interactions with other hardware parts inside the phone properly. Whatever the reason is, Samsung needs to clarify it publicly, if it hopes to win back at least some of the trust that it has lost due to the incident.

Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)

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Many experts had stipulated that in order to make up for some of the loss that the Note 7 disaster had inflicted on Samsung, they may release the Galaxy S8 earlier than expected. However, that theory was put down today when a prominent Samsung official stated, "Currently we do not have any plans to release Galaxy S8 early." What this means is that the S8 will probably be released during the Mobile World Congress 2017 at Barcelona, Spain in February, as expected. In fact, they even plan to start with South Korea and then move on to its international release from March, 17 as always.

It should be noted that another theory regarding the elimination of the Note brand was thwarted today by Samsung as well. In the meanwhile, a Blue Coral variant of the S7 Edge will be launched in South Korea on November 4, which will come in 32GB or 64GB versions. The 32GB variant and the 64GB variant will be priced at 924,000 KRW ($815 approx.) and 968,000 KRW (850 approx.) respectively, but the international release date remains unconfirmed.

"Although we planned to release Galaxy S7 Edge Blue Coral model to global markets at the same time if possible, schedule for release dates of each country has changed due to current situation of supplies." - Samsung Electronics.

Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)

We have good news for all fans of the Galaxy Note series of smartphones out there, the Note 8 is coming in 2017. In contrast to what reports straight out of South Korea had been saying, Samsung has confirmed today that the Note 8 is indeed going to be launched next year. According to Reuters, the special Note 7 exchange program employed in South Korea will not only include the Galaxy S8, but also the Galaxy Note 8, when they come out. The affected Note 7 customers who opt for the plan will be able to exchange their replacement S7/S7 Edge and have the new S8 or Note 8 at half the price.

Although we are calling it the Note 8, there is a high chance that the next flagship in the series may adopt a brand new moniker due to two reasons. The first reason is that the Note branding is tarnished at this point due to the Note 7 disaster and opting for a fresh start may not be such a bad idea. Secondly, Samsung did release a "Note 8" tablet back in 2013 already. The report also debunks the rumor that Samsung will concentrate on just one flagship smartphone this year to reduce the pressure of meeting timelines, in favour of incorporating a more rigorous security and safety check before releasing a smartphone.

Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)

Samsung has just made it official that they have an interesting exchange plan for the people who bought the Galaxy Note 7. However the plan is only available in South Korea as of now. A lot of the customer base wasn't satisfied in the way Samsung handled the entire debacle, but hopefully, this plan will convince some of them to stay loyal to Samsung.

According to the plan, if you exchange the Note 7 for a Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge, you will have to pay half of the original price of that particular handset and even that can be paid via instalments over a period of twelve months. The contract further extends to include that you will have to opt for the Galaxy S8 or some other flagship grade smartphone that Samsung releases next year at full price. When you decide to exchange the S7/S7 Edge for the S8 next year, the contract can be renewed in a way so that the remainder of the instalments will extend up to an additional period of 12 months, until the full price of the S8 is paid off.

While this is a good offer for Samsung loyalists, it might take quite a devotee to opt for a smartphone that one has no idea about or what the competition will be offering at that point of time. Will you go for it if it became available in your country?

Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)

The Samsung Galaxy C9 Pro is now official as it was unveiled earlier today in China. This is the first smartphone from Samsung's arsenal to come equipped with 6 gigs of RAM, as well as a Qualcomm Snapdragon 653 SoC. The huge phablet sports a 6" display that's even larger than Samsung's Note series of smartphones. However, in spite of being larger, the panel sports a lower resolution than the company's flagship smartphones as it is Full HD, instead of Quad HD.

Other specs of the phablet include 64GB of internal storage, a micro-SD card slot, 16-mp sensors for both the rear and the front camera with f/1.9 aperture, a 4,000mAh battery, dual SIM slots with 4G LTE support, fingerprint sensor, Cirrus manufactured Hi-Fi audio codec, a 3.5mm audio jack, NFC, Samsung Pay, Android 6.0.1 and an all metal body. We are particularly interested to see how the octa-core SD 653 performs, which is powered by four Cortex-A72 cores and four Cortex-A53 cores. The powerful Adreno 510 GPU supporting the CPU cores should also be able to take care of any modern Android games that you throw at it, especially since it's only a 1080p panel on the C9 pro.

Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)