Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7, which has become known as the Nuke 7 in some circles, has had a bad month. Despite garnering excellent reviews, a very small percentage of Note 7 devices exploded. This caused Samsung to announce a recall. Samsung has replaced defective Note 7 devices with new ones.
Judging by posts on Reddit and other forums, the Galaxy Note 7 replacement is excellent. It doesn’t get too hot like the previous Note 7, and the battery life is still excellent. However, the media has doubled down on Samsung by taking a small amount of reports that the replacement Note 7 is defective and reporting it as if it was the general case. Even CNET has joined in on the action.
“Samsung could have another problem on its hands, though, as a Chinese man says a brand new Note 7 exploded on him.”
The Galaxy Note 7 replacement units have been well received by actual customers, but not the mainstream media. [Image by Daryl Deino]
The article adds that Samsung had said the new Chinese models were safe. It’s important to note that the buyer of the exploding phone bought his from a third-party dealer in China. Many of these third-party dealers, especially in China, put phones on sale with different chargers or other things that Samsung would never sell their phones with. Still, a lot of other sources have repeated the story and Samsung is currently dealing with another major PR blunder that was likely blown way out of proportion
Some of the commenters after the CNET article are suspicious.
“So he wouldn’t give it [the ‘exploding’ phone) to Samsung. I doubt that it did happen then,” says Thereallordbaal.
“If anyone believes this crock of crap then they are just as lame as the Chinese fraudster,” says Camdexter.
Apple fanboys have been celebrating Samsung’s rash of bad luck for the past couple weeks. However, they may want to put down the drinks. BGR has the news .
“So what’s the latest feature Apple ripped off from its top smartphone rival Samsung? Apparently, Apple was jealous that Samsung’s exploding Galaxy Note 7 is stealing some of the iPhone 7’s airtime, so it built an exploding smartphone of its own.”
So far, this has been the only case reported. But, like with the Samsung Galaxy Note 7, you can bet there will be more stories of Galaxy Note 7 fake explosions. A couple weeks back, the Inquisitr reported on a fake Note 7 explosion story that made rounds with people clearly not doing any fact checking.
“I live in Tustin, CA and was charging my Note 7 in my car. I was driving on the 405 and suddenly, I saw my phone was on fire. I was luckily able to pull over to the side and get out. However, I burned my left arm before and had to go to the hospital. But it could have been a lot worse,” said Bluegirl99 , who adds that only 30 seconds after she got out of the car, it exploded.
Bluegirl99 claimed that she wasn’t too close to the car, so the explosion didn’t hurt her. Still, she was quite “shocked” as she wrote the post from the hospital. However, a news check from the Inquisitr on many different websites didn’t reveal one single story about a car that blew up on the 405 that Thursday afternoon. After our story, Reddit deleted Bluegirl99’s post from the main Galaxy Note 7 thread.
It would be downright unfair to dismiss the fact that there were some true stories of Galaxy Note 7 explosions. However, far less than 1 percent of Galaxy Note 7 units that were sold exploded. Samsung acknowledged there was an issue and fixed it. One wonders if the media will treat Apple with the same vitriol they have treated Samsung if there are more exploding iPhone 7 units.
