"So I [sic] driving along today with my Galaxy S3 in my car mount when suddenly a white flame, sparks and a bang came out of the phone," Boards.ie forum user "dillo2k10" wrote on June 20. "I pulled in to look at my phone, [it] burned from the inside out. Burned through the plastic and melted [the] case to my phone."

While the tale was a good one, it was also just a tale. Following the publishing of a report Friday by Fire Investigations, a firm hired by Samsung to investigate the incident, the user came clean.

"I would like to retract my original statement," dillo2k10 . "The damage to the phone was caused by another person, although they were attempting to recover the phone from water this later caused the damage shown on the phone. It occurred due to a large amount of external energy and there was no fault with the phone. This was not a deliberate act but a stupid mistake."

The "large amount of external energy" is believed to have come from a microwave.

In his for Fire Investigations, investigator Peter Mansi noted that the physical damage to the phone's internal components did not appear to have been created from energy within the handset but rather from an external source.