Samsung Electronics is set to launch a refurbished Galaxy Note 7 on Friday, jumping into the smartphone competition that has turned unseasonably heated this summer.
June, a generally offseason period ahead of the rollout of new premium devices in the fall, is expected to be busy this year, as Samsung and LG have continued to launch variants of their premium smartphones.
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(Samsung Electronics) |
Samsung said Thursday it will sell its long-rumored refurbished Note 7 on Friday. The device is a renewed version of the fire-prone Note 7, which was discontinued in October. Around 400,000 refurbished phones will be sold for 699,600 won ($605), 30 percent less than the original Note 7 price of 988,900 won.
The refurbished devices will be available only in Korea via three local carriers -- KT, SK Telecom and LG Uplus -- and in four colors -- black onyx, blue coral, gold platinum and silver titanium -- according to the firm.
Samsung lowered its battery capacity to 3,200 milliamp-hours from the 3,500 mAh of the original Note 7 to prevent battery explosions, the main motive behind discontinuing sales last year.
They will have the same features as the Note 7, but will additionally sport the firm’s new voice assistant service Bixby, which the Galaxy S8 also offers.
The launch of the refurbished phones comes a week after Samsung unveiled variants of the Galaxy S8 that have the same features but come in different colors. They are the Galaxy S8 in rose pink and Galaxy S8 Plus in coral blue, which sell for 935,000 won and 990,000 won, respectively.
Samsung’s new devices are expected to compete with other variants of premium smartphones from its local rival LG Electronics.
On Friday, LG also rolled out variants of the LG G6, which are the G6 Plus and G6 32GB sold for 957,000 won and 819,500 won, compared to G6’s original price of 899,900 won.
The G6 variants sport the same feature but come with different memory capacity. G6 Plus sports 128 gigabytes of memory capacity and the G6 32GB has 32 gigabytes of memory capacity, while the original G6 has 64 gigabytes of memory capacity.
“This is becoming a trend for smartphone makers to unveil diverse variants of premium smartphones and budget models throughout a year in order to secure stable income and satisfy various consumer appetite,” said Kim Jong-ki, a researcher specializing in the mobile industry at the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade.
By Shin Ji-hye (
shinjh@heraldcorp.com)
