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The Samsung Galaxy S III that reportedly “exploded” in a car charger, according to its owner, had actually been placed in a microwave.
(Credit: Boards.ie)
Following the report of damage on an Irish bulletin board (Google cached) by forum member “dillo2k10”, Samsung retrieved the phone and passed it on to Fire Investigations UK, which examined the damage and returned a report of its findings with the following statement:
“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.”
Seriously, a microwave? We’ve heard of people trying lots of inventive methods for drying out a phone that has received water damage, but this one takes the cake. The user dillo2k10 has since deleted the original thread on the Boards.ie forum, and posted a very official-sounding statement that Samsung has republished on its global press site.
“I would like to retract my original statement. 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.”
Putting an electrical device in a microwave was undoubtedly a stupid mistake, but removing the water damage-detection patch and fraudulently claiming a spontaneous explosion sound like deliberate acts to us. Hopefully, the same Samsung rep who replaced the damaged unit with a new GS3 had the pleasure of taking that replacement back.
If you’ve had more luck with restoring a water-damaged phone to working order, we’d love to hear about it below. We’ve heard of people putting phones in tubs of rice and using hair dryers, but the best results seems to come from those who leave their phones alone until they dry out naturally.
