The Samsung Note7 Games: Catching Fire is not the name of the latest Hollywood blockbuster but an apparent case of actual reality for replacement Note7's from the crisis-hit Chaebol.
It’s not Katniss Everdeen catching fire but Samsung’s replacement Note7 smartphones, according to a troubling trilogy of reports this last week, leading some to call for the Note7 to be taken off the market completely.
US TV station WKYT is reporting that Michael Klering and his wife ‘woke up to a hissing sound’ in their bedroom last Tuesday at 4am.
WKYT reports Klering stating he was ‘scared to death for a minute’ waking up to a ‘hissing sound,’ with the ‘whole room covered in smoke’ and an awful smell - with his phone ‘on fire.’
{loadposition alex08}
Klering said it was a replacement Note7 received little more than a week before, and that ‘it wasn’t plugged in, ‘it wasn’t anything, it was just sitting there.’
Later in the day, Klering was feeling sick and went to the hospital, vomiting up ‘scary’ black stuff that ‘didn’t look right,’ which was diagnosed as ‘acute bronchitis.’
WKYT reported Klering stating Samsung 'wanted possession of his device' but that Klering 'refused to give it up,' although Klering stated Samsung paid him to have the Note7 x-rayed.
The TV network's report then said Klering 'felt Samsung was helping him.'
Disturbingly, however, WKYT then reported Klering stating he received a message accidentally sent to him by a Samsung representative, which read: “Just now got this. I can try and slow him down if we think it will matter, or we just let him do what he keeps threatening to do and see if he does it.”
Klering said: “It made me think you know they're not taking this serious enough and it's time to move on” and is now seeking ‘legal help’, adding of the Note7 that: “They're in kid’s pockets, people's cars, all kinds of things. We saw with the first ones. Samsung needs to do something to get these off the market.”
The Verge reported on this with the headline: “Samsung knew a third replacement Note 7 caught fire on Tuesday and said nothing.’
The news followed another US TV station, KSTP, reporting a teenager stating her replacement Samsung Note7 smartphone ‘melted in her hand.’
This was preceded by a replacement Note7 smartphone catching fire on a Southwest Airlines plane in the US on 5 October.
It has left AT&T wondering whether to cease sales of Note7 smartphones completely, as reported by ArsTechnica and Bloomberg.
All eyes are on what Samsung will do next.
