SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20161202-7609C-2147410202. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Matched catalog product: Samsung Galaxy S7. Incident: On 11/27 I was prompted by my Samsung Galaxy S7 to download an update. I was driving on the free way and noticed a bad smell shortly after the update began. I tried to pick up the phone and the case was soft and warped, the phone was uncomfortably hot and the smell got so bad, my husband thought the phone was going to catch fire or implode. He rolled down his window and threw the phone in the back of the truck to cool it down(the weather was cold and raining) once we got to our destination, we grabbed the phone and it was drained from 99% battery to 19% battery in less than an hour but it remained cool as I did not use it or plug it in. The next day, in the car on my commute I had to plug it in to charge it and the smell came back, the phone got hot and melted a rubber portion and the buttons popped out on the sides. I contacted Samsung and after explaining what happened they instructed me to put the phone in a plain cardboard box and ship via [REDACTED] to Plano Texas. They said that using air mail would get it there in less than 2 days so they could take apart the phone before they would replace the phone since I bought it from Verizon, I told the Samsung employee a cell phone is business critical , I commute 5 hours a day and it is unsafe and I can not do my job without a phone for a week or more. She said that I should then take the phone to Verizon to get rid of it. Now, Verizon will not trade the phone in as it is a "potential Safety Hazard" and said I need to work with