See the aftermath of this guy’s Galaxy S3 exploding
The world can never get enough of the exploding cell phone story. Whether it’s legit and leaves real cause for concern, or a fabricated story designed to falsely sue phone manufacturers (we’re looking at you, exploding DROID 2 guy), we’re always amazed by these accounts. That’s why the story of one Reddit user’s Galaxy S3 exploding caught our attention quite effortlessly.
According to the poster, doing his bidding as username vizionx1208 on Reddit, the phone woke him up in the middle of the night when it made a loud noise and a weird squeaking sound. Smoke began rising from the spot where his phone lay as a feint smell of burnt plastic began filling the air. He turned the lights on only to find this:
That’s the battery plastic battery door that sits on the back of the device, and it looks like someone took a blowtorch to it (we’re not saying this particular guy did that, but that’s what we’d liken the scene to). To make matters worse, the Galaxy S3 got so hot that it began burning a hole into the mattress’s pillow top.
The poster goes on to describe the scene of plastic “kind of shooting out” the device, which my mind immediately envisioned to look something like an overactive volcano spewing lava everywhere. The scene probably wasn’t that intense, but it was enough to reportedly burn a small part of his finger. Ouch. Oh, and the battery swelled up like a bag being filled with liquid, though it luckily didn’t explode and create an even bigger problem.
Some OEMs’ first reaction to such cases is to wonder whether or not any software modifications have been made to the device. Unfortunately for Samsung, the user is claiming that the device was completely stock firmware, being devoid of any aftermarket modifications. It wasn’t even rooted. The next step? To see if Samsung will do anything about it. The user says he has contacted Samsung’s liability department, but could only catch the voicemail as of the time of this writing.
Take a look at some more photos of this disaster over at the guy’s imgur album, and pray that something like this doesn’t eventually happen to you. I know I’m praying my devices don’t ever do this: I tend to keep them in my bed as I sleep, and by the time I wake up in the morning I usually find myself laying on it in some way.
[via Reddit, thanks to everyone who sent this in!]