Another Galaxy S25+ Caught Fire While Charging, but Samsung Blames the Owner

Another Samsung Galaxy S25+ has reportedly caught fire while charging, but this case has ended very differently from one we covered earlier this year. Samsung inspected the damaged phone and says a previous drop had damaged its battery, so the company is blaming the incident on the owner. The customer, however, isn't convinced by that explanation.

The incident happened in Qingdao, China, on July 31. According to the owner, his wife plugged the Galaxy S25+ in before going to sleep. She later woke up after hearing a loud pop and smelling smoke, only to find that the phone had caught fire.

Thankfully, she was able to put the fire out and no one was hurt. The owner contacted Samsung the next morning, but things became a little more complicated because the phone was in China. It was later taken to South Korea and handed over to Samsung's Nowon Service Center on August 5 for a closer look.

Samsung gave the owner its answer on August 12. According to the company, the Galaxy S25+ had been dropped at some point before the fire. That drop had caused a hole in the battery, which then caught fire when the phone was plugged in.

Based on that result, Samsung called the case customer negligence and refused to offer compensation.

Here's the thing, though. The owner believes Samsung has the story backwards. He says the damaged rear glass may have been caused by the battery fire itself, rather than by an earlier drop that damaged the battery.

He has asked Samsung for the full report and the rules used to reject his claim. According to his account, Samsung refused to provide them, saying that the report belongs to the company. The owner says Samsung also warned him against sharing false or exaggerated claims about the case.

To be fair, we only have one side of the full technical report here. A damaged lithium-ion battery can become dangerous, especially if the cells inside have been hit or pierced. At the same time, without seeing Samsung's report, it is hard to know whether the damage happened before or during the fire.

What makes this case more interesting is that we have seen similar reports before. In January, Samsung accepted liability after another Galaxy S25+ caught fire while charging in the US. That phone was only two months old and was being charged with an official Samsung charger and cable.

A local fire department said that incident involved a thermal runaway event, and Samsung later agreed to cover the phone, medical bills and damage caused by the fire.

That doesn't mean there is a wider problem with the Galaxy S25 series. Millions of these phones have been sold, and a handful of fire reports is nowhere near enough to prove a common hardware fault.

Still, I can understand why the owner wants more answers. If Samsung has clear evidence that a drop damaged the battery, showing more of that evidence would help settle the matter. Until then, we have a burned Galaxy S25+, Samsung blaming physical damage, and an owner who says the company got it wrong.

And with several Galaxy S25 fire reports now appearing over the past year, this probably isn't a story Samsung will want to see again.