Worried about your Samsung Note 7? Here are your options

NEW YORK -- Worries about the safety of Samsung's replacement Galaxy Note 7 smartphones have consumers fretting about what to do. And they're getting little guidance from the company.

U.S. regulators ordered a recall of the original Note 7, a huge phone-bordering-on-tablet with a huge battery, in late September after the devices demonstrated an unwelcome tendency to catch fire. Now, following reports the company's replacement versions also have overheated or caught fire, Samsung says it is "temporarily adjusting " Note 7 production to "ensure quality and safety matters."

But it neither confirmed nor denied a previous report by South Korea's Yonhap news agency it has suspended production of the phones. Samsung said it's investigating the recent fires while working with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

A commission spokesman said Monday his agency is investigating five new incidents since the recall was announced, although it hasn't confirmed whether they all involved phones that were distributed as replacements for devices involved in the recall.

The four major U.S. mobile carriers, meanwhile, have suspended trade-ins for the replacement phones; so have major retailers such as Best Buy. Instead, these companies are offering to swap Note 7s out for any other smartphone of the customer's choice.

Here's a look at the options for Note 7 owners.

Swap for a different Samsung phone

Samsung's equivalent phones are mostly, well, old. If you just dropped several hundred dollars on the latest Samsung device, do you really want to trade it for last year's model?

One option is Samsung's Galaxy S smartphone, which is slightly smaller and cheaper than the Note. While it has many of the same features of the Note, it lacks a stylus and the Note 7's iris scanner.

The phone also came out in March, which might render it perilously close to middle-aged where cutting-edge types are concerned.

An older version of the Note is an option, though also a disappointing one, given the Note 5 (there was no Note 6) launched more than a year ago. Many Note 7 owners already may own one or recently traded theirs in to get the Note 7.

Swap for a phone made by someone else

Google's new Pixel phones are coming out later this month, while LG and HTC also have large Android smartphones of varying ages on the market.

Apple's iPhone 7 also recently launched and has been fairly well received, even though it no longer features the standard headphone jack.

That means Note 7 owners would need adapters for their old earbuds; they also might find it jarring to switch from an Android phone to the iPhone.

Wait it out

The obvious downside: Potential overheating and fire for those who insist on using their Note 7s. If you have an older phone you could reactivate for a while, this might not be a bad choice; just make sure to power the Note 7 down before tossing it in a drawer.

It's possible company and government investigations will determine the fires, at least those involving the replacement phones, were just isolated incidents. Or Samsung might release a safe replacement phone before long.

It's too early to tell. In the meantime, better safe than sorry.

AP technology writers Tali Arbel in New York and Brandon Bailey in San Francisco contributed to this report.