If you’ve been waiting for the now-official recall of the Samsung Galaxy Note smartphone to conclude before ordering your own phone, good news: as replacement phones are about to arrive, at least one carrier has opened orders up to people who want the phone and don’t yet own one.
Only about a quarter of the Galaxy Note 7 phones out there in the wild had been exchanged so far, as of yesterday, possibly because users didn’t want to exchange their phones for a different model, if only temporarily.

They may have also found the procedure for exchanging phones confusing and simply preferred to use their phones carefully until clearer instructions or procedures came out.

While waiting for the replacement phones for defective models, Samsung had stopped sales of the new device. New phones first had to go to customers waiting for exchanges, which were supposed to begin today at the latest.

Samsung is giving users a few quick and easy ways to tell whether their phone is an exploding version or a replacement: an upcoming software update will make the battery indicator green, and there will be a visual cues on the UPC sticker on the box.

U.S. carrier Verizon starts taking orders for new Samsung Note 7 phones [Reuters]

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