https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/23/16189708/samsung-galaxy-unpacked-2017-note-7-apology

Before Samsung announced the Galaxy Note 8 during its event in New York City today, it first addressed last year’s Note 7 battery mishap. This is not new. Samsung has spent the last year issuing conciliatory statements about its phone that repeatedly caught fire, as well as how poorly it acted in response to those failures. But this time around, the company opted for an uplifting tone, starting the whole event off with a sugary reel of supportive words from Note fans.

Opening the event this way was a sign that, in a post-Galaxy S8 world, Samsung feels comfortable enough to drop the apologetic tone. It was also a fairly shrewd marketing move. Note fans are a core group of customers that has always been important to Samsung since the product’s earliest days. “Even when we disappointed you, you stuck with us,” the company stated in the onstage video, in between messages that Samsung plucked from Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.