Samsung blames 14-Year-Old Girl for J7 smartphone explosion

The family of a Charlotte teen is calling Samsung’s investigation an insult after the company seemingly blamed the 14-year-old girl when her smartphone caught fire in the middle of the night.

The company analyzed the J7 Prime phone and attributed the fire to “an excessive external force.”

“We cannot speculate on the circumstances surrounding the external force that was involved in this incident,” a spokesperson said.

The girl’s mom, Janice Shirley, says the company’s findings are “getting on my nerves.”

“I think they’re trying to put the blame off on someone else,” said Shirley.

She says the phone was only a few months old and insists her daughter, Asia, didn’t tamper with it in any way saying “she loves being on the cell phone.”

“Like that’s all we have to do is run around and mess with phones and make them catch on fire?,” said Shirley. “No. We’re better people than that. My child is a better person than that.”

Technology expert Tom Jelneck is also skeptical of Samsung’s findings.

“Honestly, I have a hard time wrapping my head around this being ‘excessive force,'” said Jelneck. “You would need to have a vice, essentially, and really compact this thing. And, or, drop it from a 10-story building to make that type of an impact [to cause the battery to catch fire]…It would take a lot of force to make that battery explode in my humble opinion.”

Samsung officials tell FOX 46 they “conducted a thorough analysis” of Shirley’s phone and found “no evidence of a defect.” The company could not find evidence this incident was the result of a charger, either, a spokesperson said.

The company says it stands behind the safety of its products.

http://www.fox46charlotte.com/news/local-news/family-expert-questions-samsungs-response-after-smartphone-explodes