AfterDawn: Tech news

Samsung phone battery catches fire, burns man in South Korea

Written by James Delahunty @ 08 Feb 2013 4:29 User comments (3)

Samsung phone battery catches fire, burns man in South Korea Lithium-Ion burns in pocket.
South Korean media is reporting the case of a man who suffered burns when the lithium-ion battery from a Galaxy Note 'exploded' and caught fire in his pocket.

The battery was not in the Samsung device at the time, according to the Bupyeong Fire Station in Incheon city. South Korean media reported that the battery actually exploded, but the officials did not confirm that was the case.

The man, who was not identified, suffered second degree burns and a one inch wound on his thigh from the incident on Saturday night.

Samsung has said there is no investigation planned, according to the Associated Press.

Lithium-Ion batteries are in millions of different kinds of devices all over the world, and every now and then we hear cases of them overheating and burning. They are at the center of the current problems with the Boeing 787 dreamliner aircraft, for example.



Given the amount of L-Ion batteries in constant use, the number of these incidents is extremely low, and may often come down to the batteries being damaged, such as the case of the iPhone that started burning after an Australian flight landed a while back. In that case, a bad repair of the iPhone was to blame.

Tags: Samsung
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3 user comments

18.2.2013 16:57

Dude probably had the battery in a pocket full of change.

28.2.2013 16:59

Originally posted by Morreale:
Dude probably had the battery in a pocket full of change.
I was going to comment on how in the world it could have done that not even in the phone but after your comment... that probably explains it. if so totally his fault not Samsungs.

38.2.2013 17:16

Originally posted by Qliphah:
Originally posted by Morreale:
Dude probably had the battery in a pocket full of change.
I was going to comment on how in the world it could have done that not even in the phone but after your comment... that probably explains it. if so totally his fault not Samsungs.
I was thinking the same thing but didn't write it because its just speculation. Even if the battery was somehow crushed in his pocket that could contribute to it.

Not all L-Ion batteries are the same. People forget they don't just power phones and tablets, they power electric cars too, and the batteries in electric cars are much safer even than the batteries in phones (and we see maybe a handful of cases where batteries have exploded every year, out of the billions of batteries used).

I read this yesterday from Elon Musk (Telsa, SpaceX) about the problem with the batteries used on the Dreamliner...

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/artic...-unsafe-381627/

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