(ECNS) -- Samsung Electronics announced on Tuesday that it will compensate Galaxy Note 7 parts suppliers in addition to a full refund to buyers, amid contradictory reports about the cause of phone explosions, Beijing Morning Post reports.
For Note 7 parts that have been produced but not put into use, suppliers will get a full refund from Samsung, and compensation will also be made on parts the production of which has not been finished. Samsung will also pay for the raw materials suppliers have bought to produce Note 7 parts.
Moreover, Samsung will consider placing new orders from its suppliers for components to be used in the company's other smartphone products.
Last week, it decided to terminate sales of the fire-prone Note 7 forever. The company's recall involves about 190,000 Note 7s in China and more than 2 million worldwide.
However, it has yet to give a plausible explanation for the cause of the Note 7 explosions reported by consumers across the world.
According to a report by China National Radio (CNR), Samsung issued statements on September 19 and 29 respectively, saying that analysis on Chinese buyers' Note 7s showed that the phones exploded as a result of external heating and that it had nothing to do with the batteries.
In the September 29 statement, Samsung said checks made by China Telecommunication Technology Labs (CTTL) under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology found external heating had led the Note 7s to catch fire.
However, according to a latest CTTL report on two Note 7s sent by Chinese consumers for analysis, one of the phones was "so burnt that it was impossible to identify the cause of why it caught fire" while for the other "no signs of external heating was detected in the sample" and that "the overheating and damage to the phone was caused by spontaneous ignition of the battery", CNR reported.
When asked why contradictory conclusions were given, a source at CTTL said it was only responsible for test results of the samples they received. In the earlier case, the damaged phones, one from Beijing and the other from Dongguan, had been sent by Samsung for checks and they knew nothing about whom the phones belonged to, the source explained to CNR.
South Korean authorities have launched investigations in an attempt to find out the factors that led the Note 7 to explode.
Recently, the United States issued a ban on transport of the Note 7 by air, while airline companies in some other countries, including Singapore, Germany, Australia and New Zealand, also imposed a similar ban on the phone, citing security concerns.
