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Samsung: just 25 percent of Note 7s in US have been exchanged

Carriers will have new devices for exchanges by tomorrow

Samsung has just announced that it has shipped 500,000 replacement Galaxy Note 7 devices to US retailers and carriers. They’ll be available beginning tomorrow to owners of the original, fire-hazard Note 7 for in-store exchanges. This first batch of replenishment stock is intended exclusively for exchanges; Samsung hasn’t yet said when Note 7 retail sales will officially resume — but VentureBeat claims the relaunch will come in late October.

In another update, Samsung now says 25 percent of Note 7 devices have so far been exchanged in the United States. In a statement to The Verge, a Samsung spokesperson described that figure as “an extraordinarily fast start toward achieving our goal of removing every single affected Note 7 from circulation.” But it also makes clear that there are still a lot of potentially dangerous Note 7s out there. Safe replacement devices will display a green-colored battery in the phone’s taskbar — a clear indicator for concerned airline and mass transit employees to look for when examining the phone.

Hopefully that exchange rate will shoot up much quicker now that consumers can make a direct swap for Samsung’s latest batch of Note 7 shipments — assuming they still want one.

Note 7s with a safe battery inside will display a green battery indicator
Note 7s with a safe battery inside will display a green battery indicator

Samsung will also soon deliver updated firmware to all existing Note 7s with a new safety notice prompt (displayed at the top of this article) urging owners to power down the device immediately. The prompt is a very polite way of saying “turn this thing off, you idiot” and will show up any time an at-risk Note 7 is powered on or plugged into a charger. Without any kind of kill switch to render the phones inoperable, this might be the best Samsung can do for now.