If you've flown at all in the last few months, then you might have noticed a certain, product-specific warning as you boarded your plane:
"Passengers are prohibited from flying with the ."
The prohibition still holds on passenger and cargo jets, but now, the FAA is no longer requiring airports to point it out to you before you board. You can almost hear every Samsung executive breathe a sigh of relief.
The Department of Transportation issued the emergency ban on October 16, 2016, after reports of exploding Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones gripped the globe. Soon after, government agencies around the world banned the product from trains to airlines, reminding passengers every time they traveled of the danger that a fire-prone Note 7 posed.
Although the FAA and Department of Transportation will no longer require flight attendants to warn passengers of the phone's flight ban, Samsung has yet to officially announce what made some Note 7s combust, and how the company will safeguard future phones, like the forthcoming , from meeting the same fiery fate.
Samsung voluntarily recalled the Note 7 early last September as reports surfaced that the phone had caught fire and damaged people and property. Samsung issued replacement phones, but those started blowing up, too. Since then, the company has bribed and begged buyers to turn in their Note 7s, going so far as to brick phones that hadn't been turned in. As of last December, Samsung recovered 93 percent of the Note 7s sold in the US.
The FAA's lift on the embarrassing no-Note announcement may bring Samsung one step closer to recovering its charred reputation, but it will have to do a heckuva lot more to win back buyer's trust.