A woman looks at her mobile phone as she rides an escalator past an advertisement for Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 device at a Samsung store in the Gangnam district of Seoul. [Photo/Agencies]

An exploded phone put the manufacturer on a hot seat

In mid October, China's product quality watchdog said that Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's local unit would recall all 190,984 Galaxy Note 7 phones that it sold in China.

The latest recall in China includes the 1,858 early-release Galaxy Note 7 smartphones that the watchdog recalled on September 14.

Samsung said earlier Tuesday that it had decided to stop selling Note 7 phones in China and is now communicating with the Chinese authority to deal with this matter.

The tech giant decided to temporarily halt the global sales and exchange of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, while it investigates reports of fires in the devices.

On Sept 2, Samsung suspended sales of the Galaxy Note 7 and announced a "product exchange program", after it was found that a manufacturing defect in the phones' batteries had caused some of the handsets to generate excessive heat, resulting in fires and explosions.

However, in early October, reports emerged of incidents where these replacement phones also caught fire.