Damage caused to Samsung Galaxy S3 by fire.
Posted on 07/13/2012 11:22:37 AM PDT by null and void
Student makes mistake, tries to blame company, gets caught red-handed
Last month, a student from Ireland took to the Web forum, Boards.ie, to file a complaint that his Samsung Galaxy S3 had randomly exploded, catching fire while he was driving his car.
Damage caused to Samsung Galaxy S3 by fire.
Writing under the forum username “dilo2k10”, the student said that the incident had caused the plastic body of his phone to melt, and for the device to lose its ability to draw a signal.
“So I [sic] 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,” he wrote. “I pulled in to look at my phone, the phone burned from the inside out. Burned through the plastic and melted my case to my phone. The phone kept working but without any signal.”
Samsung asked for the phone to review the case. The company, working closely with a fire investigation unit, discovered that—surprise-surprise — the student was fibbing, and that the melting was caused by “an external power source” which, they concluded, most likely came from a domestic microwave.
Representatives from the company explained the scenario in full: “The energy source responsible for generating the heat has been determined as external to the device”, and that “the device was not responsible for the cause of the fire”. They 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.”
Once the student realized that his lie wasn’t going to end with him getting a free phone, he took to the forums again, this time to admit that he had fabricated the details of the story, and that he was simply trying to repair water damage to his phone by sticking it in the microwave for a few seconds.
“I would like to retract my original statement,” dilo2k10 wrote. “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.”
“Another person”? So it’s still not his fault, right?
Regardless, the teen did manage to get one thing right, when he concluded his post with the last line here: “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.”
Simply priceless.
My grandmother heard about this story before it was known that it was a fraud, and warned me about how them new-fangled cellular telephones could melt and burn me.
I can’t wait to tell her about this!
As I was reading, I was thinking that placing a phone in a microwave would probably do nothing whatsoever, since microwaves excite water molecules as its means of heating foods. And the “typical” cell phone would have a water content of 0.
Then, I came upon that he was trying to get some water out of it! what a maroon.
Apparently they don’t have rice or Ziplock bags in Ireland.
Sued for damages yet?
I’m guessing that he dropped it in the toilet.
If your phone or iPod gets wet, just put it in a bowl of rice, enough to cover the device, and leave it there for 24 hours. Used this trick for my daughter’s phone and hubby’s iPod that he accidentally dropped into a sink full of water.
Mrs. Prince of Space
Very well done short video of a cell phone in a microwave.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jpAI0o79kw
A few years ago there was a story about a Chinese guy who got killed when a phone in his shirt pocket exploded. Supposedly, it was a defective battery (the Mossad was not known to have a beef with the victim).
Yes, microwaves excite water molecules...but not to the exclusion of any other effects.
Put just about anything conductive in a microwave (metal), and watch the fireworks.
Take a old CD, place in u-wave, set the timer for say, 2 seconds, push "start"...
I've read where this can produce nifty homemade Christmas tree ornaments from stuff that is normally used for quickie coasters.
Come to think of it, maybe add some sparkle to the coasters as well.
If you're a Chinamen with a defective product there are worse ways to go.
Microwaves do more than that; the induce a current in any conductor in the same way that radio transmission works. I would expect that the current induced in the phone’s antennae was at least a few hundred volts.
This is how the Zombie Apocalypse started. I remember it well. (Watching on April 12, 2023)
That trick doesn’t work when the phone’s been dropped into the deep end of a swimming pool, though.
Oddly enough, there is a slightly similar story out of China today:
“And he’s student no less.”
Or more or less...but rather less than more!
If you take a phone in for warranty service, the first thing they will do is check to see if that detector has changed color. If it has, the replacement is not covered by any warranty (unless you have paid extra for one that does).
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