A Samsung Experience Store at AMK Hub in Singapore caught fire on Tuesday, the South Korean tech giant confirmed earlier today. The store located in the shopping mall in Northeastern Singapore reportedly caught fire early in the morning, some time before it was scheduled to open. Luckily, no one was injured in the incident as the store was still empty at the time, while water sprinkles at the location managed to extinguish the fire before it spread. The Seoul-based company said it’s currently in the process of investigating the matter and assessing related property damage, as well as cooperating with local authorities who are trying to identify what caused the fire in the first place. The damaged Samsung Experience Store will remain closed until the matter is resolved, Samsung said, but provided no specific time frame for its reopening.
The incident comes shortly after one of Samsung’s disposal facilities in China caught fire in February. That ordeal was reportedly caused by faulty batteries and luckily didn’t end in casualties, though it still made a lot of headlines due to last year’s Galaxy Note 7 debacle. Following an unprecedented second recall, Samsung ended up discontinuing its 2016 phablet last fall, vowing to improve its quality assurance practices to ensure such an ordeal never happens again. The Galaxy Note 7 fiasco resulted in a number of lawsuits filed against the company and even prompted Korean regulators to draft a new set of rules mandating how consumer electronics manufacturers should handle similar ordeals in the future. Apart from the defective flagship, Samsung also recently recalled a lineup of washing machines that were reportedly at risk of exploding, which unsurprisingly didn’t sit well with consumers.
The South Korean tech giant is now looking to make amends for the discontinuation of the Galaxy Note 7 and other recent issues, and it intends to start doing so with the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8 Plus that are scheduled to be unveiled tomorrow, March 29. The fact that the company suffered through another fire-related incident in the run-up to its “Unpacked” event certainly won’t help its promotional efforts, but it’s also unlikely to significantly hurt them as many consumers are reportedly extremely excited about Samsung’s upcoming pair of Android flagships.