A friend still has an original Note 7 that she was finally going to exchange this weekend. She works crazy hours and volunteers so has very little time and had trouble on a couple trips to Best Buy. She is besides herself and is simply waiting hoping to hear from Samsung this coming week about their plans to fix this sh*tstorm.
I am practically begging her to turn in the phone for another Android phone, possible the S7E or one of the new flagships that recently came out. She has several dogs and cats at home and the last thing she needs is a fire where she'll need to evacuate herself and the animals.
Samsung just truly screwed this up royally. I think they have no other choice but to recall & kill the Note 7. Make amends with customers (especially those that went out and got accessories for the Note 7 that are now useless) and fight like hell to have nothing but perfect, or as close to perfect launches in the future. Even at the expense of losing a bit of sales if that's what it takes.
Whining about iPhone fires is simply that: Whining. In the US alone there were 92 Note 7 fires before the CSPC demanded Samsung initiate an official recall. This week alone that are at least four incidents in the US (lets ignore the incidents overseas for now) with Samsung not mentioning the first in Kentucky before the second incident in a plane about to depart later in the week. They are truly not looking good.
Forget an October surprise in the presidential race. The only October surprise will be from lawyers rushing to court houses to file class action lawsuits against Sammy.
Edited: I originally counted the incident from China. There have been four US incidents that we know of this week.