Samsung Electronics refused comment on the report on Friday. It said it was conducting the inspection with its partners.
"We will share the findings as soon as possible. Samsung is fully
committed to providing the highest quality products to our consumers,"
the company said in a statement.
The company was due to hold a news conference later Friday about the
findings of its investigation and plans for the Galaxy Note 7.
Samsung launched the Note 7 on Aug. 19 in some markets, including
South Korea and the U.S. Shipments were delayed in South Korea this week
for extra quality control testing after reports that batteries of some
of the jumbo smartphones exploded while they were being charged.
South Korean high school teacher Park Soo-Jung said she rushed to buy
the Galaxy Note 7, pre-ordering and then activating it on Aug. 19, its
official launch date.
The 34-year-old living in the port city of Busan said by email that
she was bruised when she rushed out of bed after her phone burst into
flames, filling her bedroom with smoke smelling of chemicals.
Park said she's having second thoughts about buying another newly
released tech gadget, especially after losing all her personal data
stored in the destroyed Note 7.
An employee of a Samsung service center in Busan who visited Park's
school to retrieve the scorched phone confirmed that her Galaxy Note 7
caught fire and said the sample was sent to the company's headquarters.
Park said Samsung offered her a full refund and compensation of 300,000 won ($269). She did not accept the compensation.
"If the exploded phone in flame was near my head, I would not have
been able to write this post," she said in a popular online forum on
Thursday, where she shared a photo of the scorched Note 7 and described
dousing the burning phone with water.
Citing an unnamed company official, Yonhap said Samsung's
investigation has found that faulty batteries have caused phones to
catch fire. It said Samsung estimates that the number of Galaxy Note 7
phones with the faulty battery accounts for "less than 0.1 percent" of
the products in the market. Samsung is discussing how to resolve the
issue with Verizon and its other partners, the official told Yonhap.
SK Telecom, South Korea's largest mobile carrier, said about 400,000
units of the Galaxy Note 7 were estimated to have been sold in South
Korea.
Samsung beat expectations with stellar earnings in the latest quarter
and its stock price was at a record high before news emerged of the Note
7's battery problems. The company's shares rose 0.8 percent early
Friday after falling 2 percent the day before.
Despite the investigation in South Korea, Samsung went ahead with its
scheduled launch Thursday of the Galaxy Note 7 in China. Company
officials did not reply to questions about how Samsung determined which
phones are deemed safe and which require further testing. It did not say
if those phones are different from the ones sold in South Korea.
Yonhap News said five or six explosions were reported by consumers,
including Park's case, citing pictures and reports of severely damaged
phones shared in local online communities, social media and YouTube.
Other photos and accounts, other than Park's, could not be immediately
verified.
There were no confirmed reports of any injuries.
It is unusual for Samsung to confirm a delay in sales of a device, and rare for it to cite a quality issue.
"Every year, there have been accidents of battery explosions but it is
the first time that six or seven cases happened within such a short
period after the launch of a new product," said Ha Joon-doo, an analyst
at Shinhan Investment Corp.
The Galaxy Note 7 smartphone is the latest iteration of Samsung's Note
series that feature a giant screen and a stylus and usually inherit
designs and features of the Galaxy S series that debut in the spring.
Samsung also added an iris scanner to the Note 7, which lets users
unlock the phone by detecting patterns in the eyes.
Even before the issue of battery explosions emerged, supplies were not
keeping up with higher-than-expected demand for the smartphone.
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