Skip to main content

Yet another Samsung phone allegedly exploded, but it’s not the Galaxy Note 7

Samsung Galaxy Note 7
Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends
It has been bad news week after week for Samsung ever since the company began recalling exploding Galaxy Note 7 smartphones. Last week, the Korean giant recalled 2.8 million washing machines as they have a chance to also explode and now a woman in France says her Galaxy J5 exploded.

There is no recall yet and it is one of the first instances of this particular smartphone from Samsung to reportedly blow up.

Recommended Videos

Lamya Bouyirdane, the owner of the J5, says she noticed the J5 was sizzling hot after she asked her four-year-old to hand it to her — she then threw the phone away when she saw it swelling up with smoke coming out, according to the Associated Press. The phone caught fire and the back flew off.

Bouyirdane says she will sue the company. Samsung is in serious hot water if more J5 devices begin to explode — it already has to regain consumer trust in the safety of its devices to make sure its future products, like the Galaxy S8, will be a hit.

“We are unable to comment on this specific incident until we obtain and thoroughly examine the device,” a Samsung representative tells Digital Trends. “Customer safety remains our highest priority and we want to work with any customer who has experienced an issue with a Samsung product in order to investigate the matter and support them. The issues with the Galaxy Note 7 are isolated to only that model.”

The Galaxy J5 has been in the market and available for purchase for some time, so the chances of this explosion being a universal issue are low. Still, we will have to see what Samsung says after its investigation.

Julian Chokkattu
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Julian is the mobile and wearables editor at Digital Trends, covering smartphones, fitness trackers, smartwatches, and more…
The Samsung Galaxy A16 sets a new record for budget Android phones
Galaxy A16 banner Samsung

We've known that Samsung's next lineup of budget phones was on the way, especially after all of the information that leaked last week. Now, we have confirmation on several elements of the phone, but the most important of them all is the incredible (and unheard of) six years of security patches the Galaxy A16 5G will receive from launch. That means it will be fully up to date until October 31, 2030.

We reported on this possibility a couple of weeks ago, but now it's confirmed — and that's a big deal. Many budget phones only receive two years of security patches post-launch. The Galaxy A16 5G's six years of support puts it only one year behind Samsung's flagship models in the Galaxy S24 series. For a phone as cheap as the Galaxy A16, that's incredible.

Read more
Samsung’s One UI 7 update has been significantly delayed
A person holding the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Samsung fans have been waiting with bated breath for the One UI 7 update, but we have bad news: it's been delayed until next year, according to the keynote speech at Samsung's developer conference.

One UI 7 will be released with the Galaxy S25 series, which will launch in January at the earliest. It's a relatively safe assumption that updates will roll out to older devices after that.

Read more
Have one of these Samsung phones? Don’t update it right now
Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus and Galaxy S10 Plus.

Do you have an older Samsung Galaxy device, such as the Galaxy S10 or Galaxy Note 10, which came out in 2019? If so, you may want to hold off on the latest update for those devices, as 9to5Google is reporting that they’re getting bricked when the update is installed.

Samsung has gotten better about longer support for its devices over the past several years, but this also appears to have become a problem. For example, when the new update breaks your device and requires a factory reset to fix it.

Read more