Despite fire-risk, people continue to use Samsung Galaxy Note 7

We've covered this story several times of the last couple of days so I'm not going to write a long introduction. Samsung recalled its Galaxy Note 7 phone earlier this month as a fault in the battery cells resulted in a significant number of phones bursting into flames. The phone has been recalled but data from analytics firm Apteligent suggests most people aren't taking Samsung's advice seriously and continue to use the Galaxy Note 7.

The frequency of these incidents became troubling in late August as rumors of a recall started popping up. This didn’t affect adoption of the phone, as indicated by the Apteligent data. Samsung announced the recall on September 2nd, and there was a slight decrease in usage of the Note 7, as you might expect. However, that trend didn’t last. The graph below hammers home the point. People are still using their phones despite an increased risk of battery fires. There are only about 13% fewer active Note 7s than there were when the recall was announced, according to Apteligent.

One of the problems is that there aren't enough replacement phones available. Most people seem to be waiting for a replacement Note 7 and don't want to switch to a Galaxy S7. In fact, some carriers are even offering low-end Galaxy J phones as loaners so it's not a surprise people are willing to take the risk to use the phone for a bit longer.

Details about the US recall program and a IMEI code checker can be found at Samsung's website. Samsung also announced it's rolling out new firmware that will change the color of the battery load indicator so it will be easier to identify devices impacted by the recall. Devices with safe batteries will get a green icon, whereas devices with faulty batteries will stick with the old white icon.