Samsung Galaxy S9 Allegedly Catches Fire Burning Man's Hands

A man from Odessa, Florida claims that his girlfriend's Samsung Galaxy S9 smartphone started smoking and caught fire. Dave Warden III says the pair were wrapping up dinner when he noticed the Galaxy S9 starting to smoke on the kitchen counter. 

"There was popping, cracking, tingling," said Warden. He says soon after the smoke started 12-inch flames began to spew out of the smartphone. He attempted to pick up the phone and throw it into the sink but missed the sink tossing the phone onto the floor instead.

The man claims that his hands were burned while trying to move the phone. "It burned for so long that we actually had enough time to grab my phone and actually get video of it burning up." Warden says that he is concerned that other Samsung S9 smartphones might have the same issue as the phone that caught fire in his home. Samsung says that it has had no similar issues with S9 devices. Surprisingly, after the incident Warden and his girlfriend threw the burnt device away -- that means that Samsung can't do an autopsy to see what happened.

Warden says that he regrets doing that, but that they wanted the phone out of their home. "Maybe we could have done something proactive with that phone that I discarded but that's not going through your head after you watch a device just burn up on the floor. We just wanted it out of our house. We were done with it," said Warden.

Samsung also notes that the phone wasn't purchased via an authorized retailer, it was purchased via a third-party. The device in question also wasn't new, it was "lightly used" according to the couple. Warden said, "You trust the product you are not trusting the company you purchased it from. You are trusting the product and quite frankly it failed."

Warden claims until they went to their local ABC Action News network they had gotten nowhere with Samsung. Samsung now says that it has opened an investigation. Exactly how Samsung is going to investigate the incident when the phone has been thrown away is unclear. Samsung did refund the cost of the phone. Last month a woman claimed that her Samsung phone caught fire while she was driving engulfing her car in flames.