'Safe' Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Explodes in China (cnet.com)

Rahil Bhagat, writing for CNET: The tendency of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 to catch fire has led to the company's global recall of around 2.5 million of the phones, to be replaced with new, safe units. Samsung could have another problem on its hands, though, as a Chinese man says a brand new Note 7 exploded on him, Bloomberg reported. Samsung had previously said Chinese models of the phone were safe as they use a different battery than Note 7 devices sold in the rest of the world. Hu Renjie, 25, claimed his brand new Note 7, bought over the weekend from JD.com, exploded while charging, burning two of his fingers and damaging a MacBook Pro. Hu said that a representative from Samsung paid him a visit concerning this incident and asked for the smouldering corpse of his phone to perform an autopsy, but he refused.

Comments

Refused to hand over "evidence"

[thegarbz]

Hey look it blew up my macbook and burnt my finger. But no I won't give you the device so you can do a check to see what's wrong, if it was actually caused by the battery or if I intentionally rigged it to try and get you to buy me a new macbook.

This smells fishy.

Re:Refused to hand over "evidence"

[krouic]

Having both a macbook and a Galaxy Note 7 smells even fishier...

Re:Refused to hand over "evidence"

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung rep: Could you please hand over the phone so we can see why it exploded?

Mr. Burnt Fingers: Yeah, not going to do that. This is going to the police as evidence because I need to file charges against you so that I can sue you. I am not handing over the only evidence that it is your fault to someone who may have ulterior motives.

I wouldn't hand it over to the Samsung rep either unless they are standing there agreeing to accept responsibility and my medical bills at a minimum.

Re:Refused to hand over "evidence"

[vux984]

Pretty much exactly this. If I had a new anything and it 'exploded' on me then I'd expect the manufacturer to warranty the product, cover any medical costs, and cover any other damages. And if its not a shit fly by night company, I'd expect them to be volunteering a settlement without me having to sue them for one.

But I'd also expect them to want the exploded product back. That's just a given. Not only to validate my claim that it exploded due to a fault in the device... (which they should do) but also to determine whether the fault is a one off or something that will affect other devices. At this stage, like you, I think he's at best trying to scam himself a new macbook, and at worst an apple fanboi trying to create some bad press for samsung... and scam himself a new macbook. Maybe he even shorted Samsung stock as well (what prescience!)... their equivalent to the SEC ought to check.

Re:Refused to hand over "evidence"

[vux984]

Yeah, not going to do that. This is going to the police as evidence because I need to file charges against you so that I can sue you.

"+5 insightful"

The police would only be collecting it into evidence if there was a likelihood of the state pursuing a criminal prosecution. For a simple defective product, causing a mild injury the police would not be involved.

I wouldn't hand it over to the Samsung rep either unless they are standing there agreeing to accept responsibility and my medical bills at a minimum.

And Samsung would agree to accept responsibility and offer a damage settlement before verifying that the unit exploded due to a fault of the unit? As opposed to you exploding it by placing it the microwave...?

Re:Refused to hand over "evidence"

[Anubis IV]

Here's a quote from an article about Samsung's washing machines exploding.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New Jersey, references similar reports collected by local news and filed online with regulators. It also claims Samsung "has moved aggressively to collect and destroy all evidence of the defective machines" after they exploded.

Given that this is a company that's trying to silence news of this sort, it isn't fishy in the least to hang onto the only evidence you have so that you can either hand it over to the police or use it in a lawsuit against them. That's called common sense.

Re:Refused to hand over "evidence"

[chmod a x mojo]

Sorry but no. Just no.

Your whole premise is extremely flawed. There is absolutely nothing, and I mean nothing super special about any of the phones on the market that makes it so any competent Electrical Engineer can't do a post mortem AND competently indicate to the maker what exactly the order of events were. Samsung knows what was where and can piece together scenarios from that, and request further clarifications.

Samsung is not the only company that can make determination about devices, any competent EE can. An EE from Nokia / LG / SpaceX / any damn company that Employs competently trained EE's could tell you the what where and reasonable hypothesis of why of the failure.

Ordered from where?

[phorm]

What's to say a local supplier didn't import models from out-of-country?

Heh

[XSportSeeker]

I was expecting this to happen sooner or later, and now we'll see the media reaction to it.

There are just too many factors concerning possible smartphone explosions in this generation (faulty USB Type C cables, more power going into charging making any shoddy accessory a potential cause for thermal runaways)... and now that the press knows these stories sell, they'll bank on them more heavily creating a warped sense that these things started happening now.

Reports so far have been incredibly superficial, with no previous investigation and not many details about investigations whether the allegations are true or not.

Just weird to see how things changed this fast in the past few months.

I'm curious

[PRMan]

Since he just bought it, I'm curious to see if it is an old, returned phone that somebody shipped to China to alter and resell. Hopefully the Samsung rep was at least allowed to get the serial number.