Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 recall is unprecedented due to the sheer number of issues that are being reported, which is now said to be up to 92 reports in the U.S. alone, with 25 of those reports including burns. Today, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission together with Samsung has issued a formal recall of the Galaxy Note 7 in the U.S., and in their official report about the formal recall, the CPSC states that of the 92 total reports that Samsung has received thus far (there’s no word on if there will be more or not) and in addition to the 25 of those which include burn cases, 55 of those 92 reports are reports of fire damage or property damage due to the battery overheating.
While this is mostly the same information that was already made public over the last couple of weeks since the first reports came in, the number of reports has risen considerably since then, as they were initially numbered at about 35 reports to begin with. Although there is not a lot of detail from the formal recall report, it does mention that the reports of property damage included fires, with one happening in a garage and others happening in cars. This follows a video which was posted earlier this morning up to YouTube showing a car that had caught on fire due to the Galaxy Note 7 battery overheating, although this is also not the first report of the device causing fire damage to a vehicle as an earlier report from last week states that the phone caused a fire in someone’s Jeep while it was parked in their driveway.
Beyond this little bit of detail, the CPSC makes requests of what Samsung has already been attempting to get consumers to do, which is stop using their Galaxy Note 7 devices and power them down immediately, and to stop charging them if they were being charged in the first place. As there are plenty of consumers who have likely not returned their devices yet, it’s entirely possible that more reports of overheating batteries could be issued before all of this is over, especially with 1 million affected devices nationwide, which, as mentioned in the announcement about the formal recall extends to any devices which were purchased by consumers before September 15th. A statement from the CSPC about the number of reports that Samsung has received also puts into perspective just how many real issues have popped up.