At this point, I’m actually starting to feel bad for Samsung. Well, as bad as anyone can feel for a massive corporation that is probably going to be fine, eventually… nonetheless, they’ve been having a pretty tough year. They rushed the Galaxy Note 7 out the door, made their employees endure long hours and high stresses, presumably to beat the iPhone 7 launch date… only to discover that the Galaxy Note 7 had internal problems that caused phones to blow up. Like, literal explosions. Not the figurative form of “blowing up,” which would be a good thing.
So, Samsung rushed a bunch of replacement phones out the door to Samsung Galaxy Note 7 owners across the planet. Except, um, those replacement phones seem to have similar problems. Engadget reports that four of these replacement phones have caught on fire so far. Their initial report detailed three incidents, but an update from The Verge from today reveals that yet another customer has reported their phone caught on fire.
Here’s Samsung’s official response: “We are working diligently with authorities and third party experts and will share findings when we have completed the investigation. Even though there are a limited number of reports, we want to reassure customers that we are taking every report seriously. If we determine a product safety issue exists, Samsung will take immediate steps approved by the CPSC to resolve the situation.”
In a more recent update, however, an AT&T spokesperson told The Verge that Samsung has halted all further sales of the Note 7 “pending further investigation” into the fires.
As if things couldn’t already get bad enough for Samsung, Mac Rumors reports that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit just reinstated that Samsung officially owes Apple $119.6 million dollars due to patent infringement over the slide-to-unlock feature, the autocorrect feature, and the methodology used to allow users to tap on phone numbers to make phone calls.
All in all, it sure does sound like it’s going to take a while for Samsung to recover from all the financial losses they’ve experienced this year. Their quest to become the next Apple has officially gone up in flames. (Sorry.)
(via Engadget, image via Isriya Paireepairit on Flickr)
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