Here’s the Recipe for Samsung’s Resilience

Samsung Electronics Co.'s corporate flag flies outside the company's Seocho office building in Seoul, South Korea, on Friday, Feb. 17, 2017. Samsung Group's Jay Y. Lee was formally arrested on allegations of bribery, perjury and embezzlement, an extraordinary step that jeopardizes the executive's ascent to the top role at the world's biggest smartphone maker.Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg

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By Brad Stone

July 31, 2017 at 11:00 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

Remember the Note 7? The high-end smartphone, released last year, was unfortunately prone to spontaneous combustion. Its maker, Samsung Electronics Co., spent more than $5 billion to recall it from the market amid a thunderstorm of customer injuries, airline anxieties and late-night comedy routines.

This summer, the consumer electronics juggernaut did something curious: It refurbished millions of returned phones, added new, apparently safer batteries and reintroduced it as the Note 7 Fan Edition in South Korea. It is actually getting pretty good reviews. And the company plans to sell the Note 7 FE in other Asian countries soon, ahead of the global launch of the Note 8 this fall.