A top Samsung official has hinted that it will be hard to recycle the product and its bits cannot go into the next generation products.

But when Samsung Electronics had a similar crisis in 1995, Chairman Lee Kun-hee gathered phones that were worth about $43.6 million and had carried out a phone ‘burning ceremony’ where employees burnt and hammered them to bits.

Samsung Electronics produced 4.3 million Galaxy Note 7s – 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7s up to the first recall and 1.8 million of them afterwards.

There had been rumours that the outfit was considering selling refurbished Galaxy Note 7s in developing countries such as Africa and others after the first recall. The idea was  to introduce Galaxy Note 7 at a lower price in countries where low and medium-priced phones are more popular and increase value of premium Smartphones through improvement of their images.

But the company cannot really do that when it could not find exact causes of ignition of Galaxy Note 7. A Samsung official told ET Times that resale was possible when Samsung Electronics had believed that replacement of batteries would solve problem, but because Samsung Electronics still does not know the exact causes of ignition it did not discuss anything about post-process internally.

A public burning ceremony is not on the cards now, but Samsung has not indicated what it will do with that many potentially toxic phones which might end up in a Chinese rubbish dump.