Samsung says no battery problem in China

SEOUL, South Korea (AP):

Samsung Electronics said yesterday that its investigation into the first report of a Galaxy Note 7 fire in China found no battery problem, reducing concerns that its smartphone crisis had expanded to the world's largest mobile phone market.

The South Korean tech giant said it was not able to investigate a second reported fire because it could not obtain that phone.

The two accounts of Galaxy Note 7 fires appeared on Chinese social media, and were widely reported by Chinese and South Korean media, raising alarms because the South Korean tech giant earlier said no Note 7 recall was necessary in China because the phones sold there did not have the battery manufacturing error that caused fires in dozens of phones sold in other countries.

Samsung announced the global recall of 2.5 million of its flagship smartphones just two weeks after they were launched.