Samsung is in a world of hurt right now, and there’s really no other way to describe it. The company’s Galaxy Note 7 has become a complete disaster, and in the past 48 hours, things have only gotten worse.
Just in case you’ve somehow missed the entire drama regarding the Note 7, let’s recap: Samsung’s well-reviewed Note 7 smartphone began causing major problems shortly after its official launch. The device’s battery began melting down and literally exploding in many cases, damaging homes and cars and causing injuries. Samsung recalled all of the original devices and issued “safe” replacements.
Now, it seems, all those devices are just as dangerous as the originals, and there have been multiple cases of those new smartphones also catching fire. One such device caused damage to a plane, and now the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is investigating just what exactly is going on.
The particularly damaging part for Samsung is that the company appeared to know that the replacement devices were defective, and it may have been trying to get people to stop reporting it. In an errant text message that was supposed to be sent between Samsung representatives, a Samsung employee who was working with the owner of one of a faulty device wrote:
“Just now got this. I can try and slow him down if we think it will matter, or we just let him do what he keeps threatening to do and see if he does it.”
Not surprisingly, the man who received that accidental text is now speaking with a lawyer about what to do next.
Samsung, for its part, is now halting production of the Galaxy Note 7 entirely until it can figure out exactly how to keep its devices from turning into smoldering piles of metal and plastic.