[THE INVESTOR] South Korea’s Transport Ministry on Sept. 20 officially notified air carriers and airports here allowing in-flight use of the refurbished Samsung Electronics Galaxy Note 7 smartphone.

The order comes after the Korean tech giant started recalling the Note phone due to explosive batteries in Korea this week. Passengers having the recalled devices are being advised not to use or charge onboard an airplane for safety reasons. 

The refurbished Note phone has a green battery indicator, while the recalled version has a white one.

On Sept. 2, Samsung issued a recall of all 2.5 million Note phones, including 1.5 million inventories, after several explosion reports due to the faulty battery.

The new Note phone is equipped with batteries supplied by China’s ATL only after all the defective batteries were found to have been produced by another battery supplier Samsung SDI.

According to Samsung, some 100 explosion cases of the phone have been reported in Korea and abroad between Sept. 1-9. Of them, four in Korea and eight abroad were false reports.

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)