As far as I know, the last proper phone recall was when Samsung’s battery production line was regularly producing batteries with a bent piece of metal that could short things out and burn down your home while you were asleep, possibly killing you (luckily it was recalled before that happened to anyone).

In other words, far more dangerous than this.

Samsung spent $17 billion on the recall and was able to collect 96% of the devices within a few months (they continued collecting more after that). As far as I know, they literally had a list of every serial number that had ever come off the production line, and they did everything they could to find each and every one of those devices and get it back.

Some of the measures they used were pretty extreme, including sending staff to major airports around the world, asking everyone to show their phone before boarding, and confiscating the phone on the spot if it was one of the affected models. A fire on a plane is obviously even worse than a fire in your house… if the fire happened over the ocean the pilot might be forced to crash land in the ocean so everyone can get out of the plane.

They also issued a mandatory software update, to all of the phones, which crippled charging on the phone. You could still charge the phone but not well. Supposedly this improved the safety somewhat. Less energy in the battery means it’s less likely to kill someone.

Customers were compensated - but some people said not adequately.