Sam Oliver
"Samsung is aware of this issue and will begin investigating as soon as we receive the specific product in question," the company said on its official blog. "Once the investigation is complete, we will be able to provide further details on the situation. We are seriously committed to providing our customers with the safest products possible and are looking into this seriously."
Details and pictures of the incident were first publicized this week by Engadget. The owner of Samsung's new handset originally posted their story and pictures in an online forum in Ireland.
"Driving along today with my Galaxy S3 in my car mount when suddenly a white flame, sparks and a bang came out of the phone," user "dillo2k10" wrote. "I pulled in to look at my phone, the phone burned from the inside out. Burned through the plastic and melted my case to my phone. The phone kept working but without any signal."
They went on to say that there was "no confirmation" that the incident was the fault of the Galaxy S III itself. They admitted the issue could have been caused by their car mount or the car's heating system.
The Galaxy S III is Samsung's new flagship Android-based smartphone. It launched in Europe on May 29, and debuted on all four major carriers in the U.S. this week.
Expectations for the Galaxy S III are high as its predecessor, the Galaxy S II, reached 20 million sales worldwide in 10 months. The latest Galaxy S phone has a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED screen, a 1.4-gigahertz processor, one gigabyte of RAM, and available capacities of 16, 32 and 64 gigabytes.
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41 Comments
Remember the story about the iPhone "exploding" on an Airline flight and the tech media was in an Apple skewering lather until they found it was due to an unauthorized third-party replacement of the the iPhone’s screen. So what's the problem with this fresh out of the box Galaxy III and why aren't the tech pundits skewering Samsung?
With the mention that the car's phone mount and/or heating system may have been at fault I suspect he may have been using a vent mount and overheated the phone with warm air. Certainly a possibility.
[quote name="Gatorguy" url="/t/150852/samsung-investigating-exploding-galaxy-s-iii-in-ireland#post_2132492"]With the mention that the car's phone mount and/or heating system may have been at fault I suspect he may have been using a vent mount and overheated the phone with warm air. Certainly a possibility. [/quote] Or perhaps it suffered a melt down from the radiant solar heat - no phone can withstand the blazing hot deserts of Ireland.
Considering all the damage is done right next to the charger, and not the battery, I'd bet there's a strong possibility some $.50 car charger is more to blame than the phone, but still unacceptable. However being a fireman myself, I've been to more electrical fires and flareups in homes in the last year or two year in my area than I've seen reported from the millions of chargeable devices roaming the planet in the last 5, so these are still quite rare occurrences. Unless you remember those Dell Latitudes...
On the original forum thread he mentions in a subsequent post, no7, that:
"The mount did not have a charger, and no charger was connected. It just holds the phone."
So it's not the fault of a cheap charger at least.
Also, the weather here hasn't been great this week but I can't imagine having a car heater on at all, much less turned up full blast. But it could have caught too much of the occasional sun.