A NANSHAN resident’s Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smartphone exploded Monday while it was charging, which almost started a fire at the user’s home, according to sznews.com.

The resident, surnamed Chen, said that he had left the phone charging in his bedroom at around 9 a.m. Monday, but two minutes later the phone exploded and the room was filled with dark smoke. Chen was able to immediately put out the flames on his bed, so the explosion didn’t cause any serious consequences.

Chen’s wife said that they bought the phone two years ago in a shopping mall and that the phone had been repaired a few times as it often crashed, but Samsung refused to replace it with a new phone.

She said that customer service representatives from Samsung came to their home to collect evidence Monday after the explosion. They took away the burnt phone and gave the couple a backup phone, but they didn’t mention anything about compensation.

A total of 17 cases involving Samsung smartphones catching fire in China have been reported as of the end of March. Most of the cases involve Galaxy S7 phones, which are frequently complained about by users for having a burning-hot phone body and swelling batteries. However, the company hasn’t responded to users’ complaints with any analysis on a technical level.

Samsung sold 80.2 million phones globally in the first quarter this year, outnumbering its rival Apple, but the company only occupied 3.3 percent of the market share in China. The proportion was over 20 percent a few years ago. (Zhang Yang)