Talk about a close call. A really, really close call.

Apparently, a Samsung Galaxy S II caught fire inside someone’s pocket. The incident was reported on the xda-developers forums, by a friend who seemed to be seeing at least a little bit of humor in the situation:

My friend almost lost his nuts! He said he heard a sound, a burning sensation on his leg and as he pulled this piece of junk out of his pocket he smelled burning. There was smoke coming out of his pocket and out of the phone. LoL, He said he was scared.

You think? One time a friend secretly dropped a lit firecracker in my front pocket. I imagine the situation was similar.

According to the report, the victim hadn’t even had the phone for longer than two weeks and hadn’t recently used it either – it was just sitting, cold in his pocket. He posted some photos of the melted device to prove his story. From the looks of those photos, it appears that the battery may be to blame for the incident:

It appears that iPhones aren’t the only smartphones spontaneously blowing up these days. Two high profile reports emerged earlier this week about Apple devices smoking and catching fire. The first came from Australia, where a group of passengers were startled when one of their iPhone 4s began smoking and emitting a red glow. Luckily, they were in the process of landing. Officials are still investigating the cause of the incident.

A few days later, a man in Brazil had a bad morning when he awoke to his iPhone 4 on fire, only inches away from his face. It’s thought that the battery could be the issue in those cases as well.

So look out, guys. It’s not just the radiation that could hurt your reproductive prowess when you carry your smartphone in your pocket.

[Via RegHardware]