14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung has officially retired the Note 7 (although there are rumors that refurbished units with smaller batteries could launch in select markets), but this doesn’t mean that the exploding phones saga is coming to an end.
A Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge has recently caught fire all of a sudden inside the home of a Germantown, Ohio couple while it was charging, leaving burn marks on a couch, but fortunately without causing any injuries.
Kelly Taylor explains for WDTN that he left his phone charging on the couch when he heard a sound which he described as “a small bomb.”
“We heard like a pop, like a snap. And then we heard a sizzle, like a smoke bomb being let off. Smoke was pouring off the couch. And it turned out to be this phone. And it was plugged in to this charger,” he explains.
At this point, there are absolutely no details as to what might have caused the fire, and information regarding the charger is still vague, so it’s not clear if the owner used the genuine charger or a third-party one. Judging from the video that you can see below, both the cable and the charger were genuine.
Owner asked to pay for a replacement phone
Taylor says that nobody was hurt by the phone explosion, but he does admit that when trying to push the phone off the couch it “actually burnt my finger.” His girlfriend and 3 kids were all at home when the fire occurred.
Although all signs seem to point to a defective phone or component, Taylor explains that neither AT&T nor Samsung offered to give him a new phone, with the carrier even requesting a $200 fee to replace the S7 Edge that caught fire.
“There wasn’t anything like ‘oh my goodness, can you bring us the phone and let us look at it’. They didn’t offer anything,” Taylor said. “They just wanted me to turn it in on the insurance and pay the $200 deductible.”
While the causes of the fire cannot be determined at this point, it seems to be a combination of either a defective charger or faulty battery and overheating, which might have been caused by the couch materials. The burning marks on the display also seem to indicate a faulty battery.
No matter the case, however, knowing that a phone can catch fire is a terrifying thought, so Samsung should step in and say what exactly happened with this S7 Edge to assure everyone that the Note 7 nightmare isn’t taking place once again.
