We’re going to be brutally honest with you off the bat here. Sometimes, electronic devices will break sans an apparent cause. And in very rare cases, they’ll do so by overheating, catching fire and, ultimately, blowing up, threatening the user’s well-being.
Phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, you name it, it happens, regardless of the make and model. Of course, when it happens on a relatively large scale, it’s the manufacturer’s fault for cutting quality control corners, recklessly speeding up production, and not discovering a damning component defect.
But if all of a sudden multiple models of phones designed by one company, including oldies, start making the headlines for explosive incidents, it’s hard not to cry foul.
Granted, a lawsuit recently filed stateside for third-degree burns allegedly caused by a Galaxy S7 Edge has to do with an unfortunate occurrence from back May, so it doesn’t smell particularly fishy.
Meanwhile, the circumstances of a CCTV-filmed Samsung Galaxy S7 explosion over in the UK are bizarre, to say the least. The owner of the device that “suddenly expanded” in her hand and “got really, really hot” before turning into “barbecue” swears she wasn’t charging it when clouds of white smoke emerged from the non-edgy Android, which “seemed to surprise” the Samsung reps she talked to (well, duh), as “they said it was the first they’d heard anything like this.”
The footage alas makes it hard to distinguish a potential unauthorized power bank on the café table where it all went down, and for its part, Samsung insists “there are no known safety issues with Galaxy S7 devices”, but “this issue is currently being investigated.”