Samsung’s highly touted and supposedly fireproof Galaxy Note 9 cell phone spontaneously combusted inside a Long Island woman’s purse, she charges in a lawsuit.
In what could be the first report of a Note 9 catching fire, real estate agent Diane Chung’s legal claim recalls the South Korean company’s 2016 disaster with the Galaxy Note 7, which ignited so often Samsung had to dump 2.5 million devices.
The Note 9, which retails for roughly $1,000, wasn’t supposed to have that problem, Samsung officials said ahead of its Aug. 24 release.
“The battery in the Galaxy Note 9 is safer than ever. Users do not have to worry about the batteries anymore,” said CEO Koh Dong-jin, according to reports.
Another Samsung exec, Kate Beaumont, director of product planning, said the company now had a multi-step “battery safety check” in place and the Note 9s would “absolutely not” catch fire.
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But just after midnight Sept. 3, Chung was in the elevator of a Bayside building when her brand-new phone “became extremely hot,” according to court papers.
She stopped using the phone and put it in her bag. Suddenly, “she heard a whistling and screeching sound, and she noticed thick smoke” pouring from her purse, she alleges.
Chung put the bag on the elevator floor and tried to empty it, burning her fingers as she grabbed the smoking Samsung, the suit says.
Trapped alone in the lift and “extremely panicked,” Chung dropped the phone and started smashing elevator buttons, the thick smoke making it hard to see.
Reaching the lobby, she kicked the sizzling phone out of the elevator.
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The mobile didn’t stop burning until a good Samaritan grabbed it with a cloth and plunked it into a bucket of water, Chung claims in the Queens Supreme Court lawsuit.
The fire left her unable to contact clients and ruined everything in her bag, claims Chung, who called the experience “traumatic.”
Samsung should have known the phone was “defective,” charges Chung, who wants unspecified damages and a restraining order barring the sales of any Galaxy Note 9s.
“We have not received any reports of similar incidents involving a Galaxy Note9 device and we are investigating the matter,” a Samsung spokesman said.
Source: New York Post
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