But as much of a disaster the device’s ill-fated battery unit turned out to be, the company found enough fanfare around the device to relaunch it in its home market in South Korea — refurbishing and renaming it the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Fan Edition. In January this year, the company had revealed that the major cause of their flagship device going up in flames was the malfunctioning battery unit. At the same time, Samsung also announced a new 8-point battery safety check test that the company will be undertaking in order to avoid any such dangerous issues in any of their future devices. Breathing a second life, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Fan Edition was given a teardown by iFixit.org and it revealed the only difference between the exploding Note 7 devices and the new Fan Edition is the battery pack. While this comes as no surprise that the malfunctioning batteries on the Galaxy Note 7 were replaced, albeit, with smaller ones, the company hasn’t made any hardware changes although the device is being relaunched after a period of time which saw quite a few technological advances in smartphones — specifically processors. The new battery weighs 2.3 grams less and offers 1.16 Wh less charge than the original battery — meaning it won’t back up the New Note 7 Fan Edition for as long as the original one. The only other major hardware difference is the design of the antenna, which the company claims is customised according to Korean standards — which is fine since the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Fan Edition is currently only being sold in South Korea. While there has been no news about the Galaxy Note 7’s global re-launch, it’s being speculated that the Snapdragon version of the device will receive an upgrade with the Snapdragon 821 chipset replacing the Snapdragon 820 on the refurbished devices. The Exynos chipset stays the same, which is being supplied in Korea.
