According to reports from South Korea, a Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus has caught fire while not charging. The owner of the phone posted a photo of the phone in Samsung’s South Korean forums (translated from Korean to English), noting that “I was holding the S25+ in my hand and it started to overheat and make a loud noise, so I threw it on the floor and it started to ash.”
This particular claim has understandably caused concerns among Samsung owners, who haven’t had to contend with such a fiery possibility of their phone having a meltdown since the Galaxy Note 7 days — when Samsung’s beloved Note series saw similar, but far worse issues cropping up. Since then, Samsung has been no stranger to issues like this, with reports in 2022 showing that Samsung Galaxy batteries could suffer from swelling issues.
Luckily, nothing bigger came of that, but we recently saw a Galaxy Ring’s battery swell up, causing the ring to become stuck on someone’s finger. While there were some extenuating circumstances behind that particular instance, it’s a scary series of events considering how abundant smart devices are becoming.
What happens now?
At the moment, nobody really knows what the next steps are. Samsung is believed to be investigating the issue, as the phone was handed over to an official service center. Exactly how much the company will share with the public remains to be seen.
Aside from that, there hasn’t really been any additional information given in regard to what happened or why it happened. The user who reported the issue hasn’t provided details about what they were doing with the device exactly, beyond simply holding it, so it’s unclear if there could have been something else driving the problem. They did note in their posts on the forum, though, that they were able to receive a refund from Samsung for the device.
Unfortunately, the fact still stands that this is only the latest in a running series of battery and heat-related issues with Samsung phones, and with the company not looking to move past its standard battery design with the Galaxy S26, hopefully these issues are not something more widespread.
