Being flamed for wondering if placing a battery in water was such a good idea without research I thought was logical. Being an electronics engineer with some experience in metal working I do know some metals will burn fiercely, powdered aluminium with an oxidiser is an explosive. So my question was answered cooling is needed and the conductivity of the water is not a factor. But Lithium ion batteries do have a history of thermal runaway when shorted. Sony found that out with its laptop batteries a few years ago and that was due to internal shorts plusTesla cars in crash situations do catch fire but other Lithium chemistries do not like LiFePO4 but not so compact. So I guess based on the information the battery becomes so hot that the plastics in the phone catches fire rather than the chemicals in the battery which go exothermic when shorted, so the only way to contain it is plunge it in water.
It would seem Samsung have not isolated the problem as yet, so how can they give out known good phones. With Sony the problem was micro shorts across an internal insulating membrane, believe solved by improvement in manufacturing control.
This smells of a similar problem, with a little in use mechanical stressing, bang. So Samsung may have pushed the internal limits to far to up the capacity.
Last edited by horizon flyer; 27th Oct 2016 at 12:34.