The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is arguably the hottest smartphone in the current market, but recently, it literally was when it exploded while it was charging.
This is reminiscent of when the Galaxy edge+ burst into flames when it was plugged in with the official Galaxy S3 charger back in May. This time around, it appears that a third-party charger is involved.
A user over at the Chinese forum Baidu (translated) posted the photos of a badly damaged Galaxy Note 7, claiming that it caught on fire while it was getting charged.
The story spans across a few more posts on the thread, but the gist of it is that he plugged it in at night, and after some time, he heard a "sudden bang." When he checked out what happened, he found his Samsung smartphone in flames.
Here are three shots of the burned device that he included on his first post:
After that, he followed up with another image:
This one is the most interesting photo out of the bunch because it includes a USB cable in the mix, and that is probably the charger he used to juice up his Galaxy Note 7. From the look of things, it's a third-party unit, as the wire is black and fitted with Samsung's USB-C adapter tip — out of the box, the phablet comes with an all-white charger. With that said, it's a safe bet to assume that the unofficial charger may have caused the fire.
On an interesting note, remember the third-party USB-C that fried a Chromebook Pixel 2? Well, this isn't exactly related, but it does remind everyone to be careful of picking out and buying electronic products.
However, in the charger's defense, it should be pointed out that there's more or less a chance that the particular Galaxy Note 7 he received may be at fault here.
Samsung hasn't responded yet, and it's unclear whether or not it will take action regarding the matter.
Long story short, it seems to be safer to just use the official charger to avoid things like this from happening. While third-party products such as these are typically cheaper and reliable more often than not, there's no good way of telling whether they will damage other devices or not.
What do you think really happened here? Drop by our comments section below and let us know.
Hat tip to Zach Epstein of BGR for spreading the word of this incident.
