Samsung has received some vindication after investigators determined that the high profile case of an Irish Galaxy S3 user's new smartphone supposedly catching fire while docked in his car was most likely caused deliberately by sticking the phone in the microwave.
The Irish user wrote that while driving, "suddenly a white flame, sparks and a bang came out of the phone. I'm really annoyed. That could have burned the side of my face or through my pocket and my leg, or set fire to my bed. It's very dangerous," the comments were posted on a web site in June, along with images of the damage the phone incurred, which showed it charred on one end.
Samsung immediately sought to determine the cause of the fire/explosion and hired an independent British firm, Fire Investigations UK, which specializes in fires and explosions, to figure out how such an event could've happened. They were given the damaged phone, as well as several new phones to help them perform tests.
Their results showed that the only way similar damage could be reproduced on the new phones was by popping them in a domestic microwave and blasting the phones with heat (this is not recommended). Samsung detailed the results of the investigation in a blog post here.
Sure enough, the story concocted by the Irish user was also retracted afterwards, when he admitted in a later post on the forums at boards.ie that the phone had suffered water damage, and attempts were made to dry it out with a "large amount of external energy". Needless to say, putting it in the microwave to dry it out did not have the intended results.
These are not the only cases of Galaxy S3's supposedly overheating and even catching fire, but if we've learned anything from this, it's to take everything we read online with a pinch of salt; something that won't make a microwaved Galaxy S3 taste any better.
