Not really. It implies that the owner no longer has faith in Samsung products and has switched, so I'd say it's relevant. They could have said that he replaced it with "another brand," which would have been more appropriate, but I still think it's relevant.
It's still not relevant to the story, which is about the phone exploding. The owner losing faith in Samsung doesn't matter. The only way it would be relevant is if he has decided ahead of time that he was switching to the iPhone and Samsung tried to bump him off because of it.