In short… the damage to the phone was caused by someone putting it in a domestic microwave. This finding appears to be backed up by the fact that the original poster of the damaged phone (who claimed it was just sitting in a car mount when the phone burst into flames) has removed his post and now is saying that the damage happened when someone was trying to dry the device after it got wet.

The original posting came complete with multiple images of the damaged phone. This kicked off a wild media frenzy with reports that the Galaxy S III was potentially unsafe. We took a look at the original posting and noted that there were to components that were capable of that type of damage in the affected area. In the end we decided not to post an article as this was an isolated incident and appeared to be a very misleading one at that.

This investigation is also very different from the ones we have seen with Apple (and others like Sony) in that Samsung chose to use a third party company to perform the analysis. Apple requires the phones to be returned so that Apple engineers can assess the damage and identify the cause. We wish that more companies would follow this procedure as it removes company bias and the possibility of prejudicial judgment on the part of technicians and investigators that work for and have an interest in the company.

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