I love my Samsung Galaxy Note 7 with the stylus. But I don’t want it to explode! How can I tell if the replacement Note 7 is really safe from the exploding battery problem?
You’re not alone in loving the Samsung Galaxy Note 7! In a lot of ways, it’s one of the coolest handheld gadgets on the market today with its built-in stylus and lots of apps that support write-on-screen. From artists to students wanting to add sketches or doodles to their notes, there’s lots to like about the Note 7.
Except for this little issue of the first generation batteries being unsafe and prone to bursting and exploding. Not good. In fact, you already know that there’s a worldwide recall on the first gen Note 7 including a bulletin from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission where they warn “The lithium-ion battery in the Galaxy Note7 smartphones can overheat and catch fire, posing a serious burn hazard to consumers.”
But there are new, fixed Note 7 units starting to hit the market and Samsung just released a note about how you can tell the difference between the dangerous ones and the new, fixed Galaxy Note 7 units.
The secret is in the battery icon color. Really.
Here’s a dangerous Note7 with the gray battery icon:
By comparison, here’s a safe Galaxy Note 7 with green battery icon:
See the difference?
Samsung shows that there are three places that the new, green battery icon can show up on your Android phone:
On the main screens, it’ll show up at the top, as we saw in the previous images, but it can also show up on the lock screen (see middle image) or even the power off screen (which includes battery, power off, restart and the new emergency mode buttons).
You can also look on the label on the Note7 box, apparently the newer, safe units will have a solid black square on the label itself just to the right of the IMEI number, but that’s pretty subtle if you ask me!
Anyway, that’s the scoop, and now you know how to tell whether your Galaxy Note 7 — or your friend’s unit! — are safe or dangerous. Now, let’s get all those exploding batteries out of people’s pockets and purses before there are more problems.