If you think the American voters have had a bad year, at least the election is over. Samsung's year seems to be getting worse, not better. Between exploding washing machines and of course, Galaxy Note 7 explosions, the company has had an "explosive" year. Samsung has tried to do the right thing by voluntarily recalling the washers and the smartphones in question. It even took out full page ads in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Washington Journal offering an apology. But the damage is done. Between the fires and battery explosions, airlines won't let you fly with one of the recalled Galaxy Note 7 phones. How likely is it they'll let the next version fly?
However, another shoe has just dropped. A different Samsung phone is now reported to have caught fire and exploded, this time in France, and the model was the Galaxy J5. In a way, having a different phone experience the same issue might be helpful in debugging what is going wrong. Samsung has a lot of egg on its face and needs to definitively resolve this before the Note 8 is on the shelf.