Samsung Electronics has temporarily suspended the sales and replacement of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones worldwide after consulting with the state-run product safety watchdog.
In a statement posted on its Web site Tuesday, the tech giant said it will withhold selling all Galaxy Note 7s and replacing the older ones with new products until investigations at home and abroad into reports of some of the phablet replacements catching fire are cleared up.
The measure comes a day after the company announced the temporary suspension of the production of new Note 7s.
South Korea’s product safety watchdog also released a press statement on Tuesday, advising consumers not to use the Note 7 replacements. In the statement also released on Tuesday morning, the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards(KATS) under the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said it discovered possible defects of the Note 7 replacements through an inspection into reported malfunctions of the product.
The KATS said it concluded that it needed to take immediate measures to ensure the safety of consumers.
The agency said it will hold additional talks with Samsung about specific measures to recall the products and swiftly wrap up its analysis of the cause of the glitch engrossing the phablet.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Elliot Kaye, assessed Samsung’s decision to suspend the sales of the product as “the right move.”
Currently, a total of five cases of the phone overheating and catching fire have been reported in the U.S., and one case each in South Korea, China and Taiwan.
The Korea Testing Laboratory examined the one case reported in South Korea and concluded that the phone caught fire due to a strong external shock. Results of investigations on cases reported abroad have yet to be released.