Replacement Galaxy Note 7 catches fire on Southwest plane

[Jos]

Samsung has been grabbing headlines for all the wrong reasons lately. The launch of its Galaxy Note 7 was marred by faulty (read: exploding) batteries, prompting the company to announce an unprecedented recall of about a million handsets that wiped a few billions from its market value — all this as Apple launched the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus and now Google is going for a piece of the high end market with the new Pixel phones.

To its credit Samsung was quick to address the issue and set the replacement program in motion. However, new reports of an actual replacement unit catching fire while its owner was boarding an aircraft is not going to bode well for the company.

The incident occurred while boarding Southwest Airlines flight 944 from Louisville to Baltimore and resulted in all passengers being evacuated and the flight cancelled. Apparently the owner, Brian Green, had had picked up his replacement Galaxy Note 7 at an AT&T store on September 21st. The device was at about 80% of battery capacity and powered down at the moment it burst into flames, burning through the plane’s carpet and scorching the subfloor. All 75 people aboard the Boeing 737 were evacuated with no reported injuries.

As verified by The Verge, a photograph of the Note 7’s box shows the black square symbol that indicates a replacement Note 7 and Green said it had a green battery icon.

Samsung hasn’t issued an official comment about the incident yet. As for Green, he has already replaced it with an iPhone 7 according to The Verge. Ouch.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/66578-replacement-galaxy-note-7-catches-fire-southwest-plane.html

 

[LiveResistance]

I live in Louisville and heard about this story earlier in the day. They were saying on the local news that Samsung was denying that it was a Note model at all. I guess they are really going to spin this any way they can to do damage control. It will be interesting to see if more incidents happen.

 

[Uncle Al]

Local news stations seem to jump the gun sometimes and of course any "local" contact for Samsung is going to deny anything until the corporate boys get their chance to "spin" it to their advantage. On tonight's network news they made the point that this was one of the "replacement" phones, Samsung was very concerned and would work with the FAA and other agencies to help identify the who, what, when, & where's of the matter.

No matter which way they spin it, this will be a very severe blow to Samsung and no doubt it's going to show up in this years end of year FY financials with more to come; no doubt.

 

[VitalyT]

Time to close the shop and run...

In the next news... president of Samsung dies in a plane crash engulfed in a nuclear-like fire cloud, believed to be caused by a box of replacement Note 7 phones that was on board. Samsung denies any involvement.

And now it is time to relax...

Anybody saw engraving on the battery? I think it was saying "Samsung".

 

[Uncle Al]

Time to close the shop and run...

In the next news... president of Samsung dies in a plain crash engulfed in a nuclear-like fire cloud, believed to be caused by a box of replacement Note 7 phones that was on board. Samsung denies any involvement.

And now it is time to relax...

Anybody saw engraving on the battery? I think it was saying "Samsung".

ROFLMAO!!! ..... one of my all time favorite clips! Thanks for sharing .....

 

[Kenrick]

Happy New Year!!!

 

[mrjgriffin]

Could this replacement actually be an old model that at&t pawned off as a replacement to save money? many questions can be asked but I don't care really nonetheless. this is why you wait well over a year to release anything.....new phone, new game, new movie etc. ffs everything just rolls out too quickly these days.

 

[DJMIKE25]

Time to close the shop and run...

In the next news... president of Samsung dies in a plain crash engulfed in a nuclear-like fire cloud, believed to be caused by a box of replacement Note 7 phones that was on board. Samsung denies any involvement.

And now it is time to relax...

Anybody saw engraving on the battery? I think it was saying "Samsung".

This is hilarious.

 

[robb213]

Could this replacement actually be an old model that at&t pawned off as a replacement to save money? many questions can be asked but I don't care really nonetheless. this is why you wait well over a year to release anything.....new phone, new game, new movie etc. ffs everything just rolls out too quickly these days.

That's the first thing that came to mind. I find it hard to believe that Samsung would repeat the same engineering overlook/mistake that landed itself in this mess in the first place.

So I too do wonder if the AT&T shop he got his replacement from gave him an old model that someone put a sticker on. Still have to wait and see though if Samsung did screw up again (although I think unlikely).

 

[Kibaruk]

Could this replacement actually be an old model that at&t pawned off as a replacement to save money? many questions can be asked but I don't care really nonetheless. this is why you wait well over a year to release anything.....new phone, new game, new movie etc. ffs everything just rolls out too quickly these days.

If samsung is doing the recall AT&T doesn't "save" anything, unless they are keeping the old phones which doesn't make sense.

 

[mctommy]

Could this replacement actually be an old model that at&t pawned off as a replacement to save money? many questions can be asked but I don't care really nonetheless. this is why you wait well over a year to release anything.....new phone, new game, new movie etc. ffs everything just rolls out too quickly these days.

That's the first thing that came to mind. I find it hard to believe that Samsung would repeat the same engineering overlook/mistake that landed itself in this mess in the first place.

So I too do wonder if the AT&T shop he got his replacement from gave him an old model that someone put a sticker on. Still have to wait and see though if Samsung did screw up again (although I think unlikely).

The verge updated their story that include a screenshot of the Samsung check website... and it came back clean.

 

[EClyde]

My $10 Tracphone works just fine

 

[Kenrick]

That's the first thing that came to mind. I find it hard to believe that Samsung would repeat the same engineering overlook/mistake that landed itself in this mess in the first place.

So I too do wonder if the AT&T shop he got his replacement from gave him an old model that someone put a sticker on. Still have to wait and see though if Samsung did screw up again (although I think unlikely).

They already checked and verified the IMEI. The note 4 was indeed a replacement and deemed safe when using the samsung verification site yet this happened. Maybe this is the right time to buy stocks in a fire proof clothes company.

 

[johniem]

That's what happens when you charge a fortune for a phone. I really wonder when people will realize that no phone worth over 500$.

 

[Wendy Oltman]

What is most interesting is Samsung SDI (The manufacture of the previous "bad" batteries) always claimed it was a circuit/design issue and not a battery issue. I think this is a case of Samsung pointing a shot gun in the direction of where it thought the fault might be and pulling the trigger hoping to hit the target. You do this when you don’t want your multi 100 million USD product languishing in no-mans-land.

 

[mbrowne5061]

What is most interesting is Samsung SDI (The manufacture of the previous "bad" batteries) always claimed it was a circuit/design issue and not a battery issue. I think this is a case of Samsung pointing a shot gun in the direction of where it thought the fault might be and pulling the trigger hoping to hit the target. You do this when you don’t want your multi 100 million USD product languishing in no-mans-land.

Yeah, that was where I was leaning, after reading all the stories and the details of how Samsung was handling the recall: it sounds like a bad charging circuit, not a bad battery.

 

[Trillionsin]

My $10 Tracphone works just fine

Okay Pops, your phone works great for what you use it for, we know

 

[ChrisH1]

That's what happens when you charge a fortune for a phone. I really wonder when people will realize that no phone worth over 500$.

That makes sense, if phones were cheaper it's obvious they would have fewer problems and not burst into flames so much ... wait, what?

 

[EClyde]

Okay Pops, your phone works great for what you use it for, we know

That's Mr Pops to you

 

[DaveBG]

Conspiracy theories aside, I bet this person was apple fanboy got the phone and made something to it so that it will hurt Samsung...

 

[Emexrulsier]

Sounds a bit iffy this to me, mainly with the fact he purchased and iphone afterwards. I like many use samsung over and iphone not necessarily because of the phone hardware but because of android vs ios. If my samsung was setting on fire, I wouldnt go and get a iphone, I'd move to htc, lg etc. iphone hardwares is bloody good build quality but the ios is a fecking piling of steaming horse ****.