While the news has been rife with stories of the new Samsung Galaxy Note 7’s incendiary feature (as in, some units’ batteries have exploded) and subsequent product recalls for weeks now, Hongkongers have been watching the PR crisis combust from afar… until now.
A Hong Kong woman, surnamed Wong, says her Note 7 caught fire while she was using it yesterday. In a Facebook post, the irate customer wrote that she started using the brand new, 64-gigabyte Note 7 on Sept. 2, after her husband pre-ordered it for her from local electronics chain Wilson Communications.
After reports of the Note 7 exploding made international news, Wong says she went to the Wilson branch where her phone was purchased to check if her unit needed to be replaced. She claimed the staff assured her that her phone was safe to use.
However, she claimed the phone began making a strange whirring sound while she was using it yesterday afternoon. “I couldn’t have hurled it away from myself any faster,” she said.
Wong said her phone then emitted smoke and started to melt. After it cooled down, she took the device back to Wilson, and it was sent to Samsung for testing.
At 7pm tonight, a spokesperson for Samsung Hong Kong said an investigation showed that “external heat” caused Wong’s phone to explode, not a battery fault. Seems like that’s happening a lot lately.
Samsung’s not had a great go of it recently in Hong Kong with its shiny new flagship phone. It first faced ridicule for its name – which sounds like “penis” in Cantonese slang – and now it looks like its technical faults have been scorched into everyone’s memories. What a cockup.
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