A few weeks ago, news surfaced of a rather curious incident involving Samsung's much-anticipated flagship smartphone: a Samsung Galaxy S3 owner was claiming that his device randomly caught on fire while placed in a car mount. The smartphone was sent away for investigations, and the owner received a replacement in the meantime. Samsung has now finished its investigation into the incident, and it appears the phone had actually been microwaved.
The Samsung Galaxy S3 owner detailed the incident and posted photos of the burnt device on Irish bulletin board Boards.ie (cached copy). Samsung retrieved the device and sent it to Fire Investigations UK. After analyzing the burnt device in question, Samsung concluded that the Galaxy S3 owner was not exactly telling the truth.
"So I [was] driving along today with my Galaxy S3 in my car mount when suddenly a white flame sparks and a bang came out of the phone," the owner wrote last month on the bulletin board, using the username "dillo2k10." "I pulled in to look at my phone, the phone burned from the inside out. Burned through the plastic and melted my case too my phone. The phone kept working but without any signal."
The truth finally surfaced, however, and it turns out that dillo2k10 was lying through his teeth. In fact an "external power source" caused the smartphone to melt, Samsung revealed on its blog. That external source was most likely a microwave oven.
"The energy source responsible for generating the head has been determined as external to the device," explained the fire investigation unit that worked closely with Samsung. "The device was not responsible for the cause of the fire," it added. "The only way it was possible to produce damage similar to the damage recorded within the owner's damaged device was to place the devices or component parts within a domestic microwave."
Meanwhile, Dillo2k10 deleted the original posts and has now admitted that what he reported was not exactly true. "I would like to retract my original statement," the student wrote in a new post on the same Irish bulletin board. "The damage to the phone was caused by another person, although they were attempting to recover the phone from water this later caused the damage shown on the phone. It occurred due to a large amount of external energy and there was no fault with the phone. This was not a deliberate act but a stupid mistake," wrote dillo2k10.
Basically, what dillo2k10 was trying to say there is that the Samsung Galaxy S3 in question got a little soaked, and then someone thought it would be a very good idea to microwave it dry. Who knew that microwaving your phone would ruin it? Right...actually pretty much anyone knows (or should know) that you should not place your electronics in the microwave, washing machine, or conduct "will it blend?" experiments. And if you do, do it on your own account, don't make a fuss, demand a replacement and blame it on the phone or manufacturer. Reckless acts have consequences, deliberate or not.
