Future Tense

Samsung Delays Galaxy Note 7 Shipments Amid News of Phones Literally Exploding

Boom.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

While Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 has generated mixed responses from some reviewers, new reports that the company’s premier smartphones’ batteries are literally exploding may push the dial toward hate. Specific details are still scant, but Reuters, which helped break the story, claims “images and videos of charred Galaxy Note 7s” have shown up online. Samsung has delayed further shipments of the phone to resolve the problem.

This delay could prove damaging from Samsung, which, the Wall Street Journal reports, “has been relying on its new Galaxy phones to drive the recovery of its mobile business.” Reuters claims that the news has lowered the company’s market value by $7 billion (the Journal, by contrast, puts that amount at the smaller, but still enormous, $4 billion).

The Journal’s sources cite “no clear cause for the accidents yet,” though it sounds like they happened while phones were plugged in. The paper points to claims that “[l]ow quality electronics, including power chargers” have been responsible for similar incidents in the past.