OnePlus has won over many hearts with its impressive line of products and the brand has also earned a reputation for being the most trusted brand. The company's community-first approach paired with value-for-money phones has contributed towards its success in India. Despite the shine and zeal of the products, OnePlus' legacy product is painting the brand in a bad light.
Incidents involving mobile phone explosions have sadly become quite common. OnePlus is a name rarely associated with such instance, but the company's first-ever product, OnePlus One, has changed that.
Earlier this week, a OnePlus One smartphone caught fire while it was unplugged and switched off, raising several safety concerns. Owner of the phone, Rahul Himalian, reported the incident, which took place on July 3, while he was asleep in his room.
The OnePlus One started fuming and flaming and Himalian woke up by the suffocating and nauseating fumes generated by the phone. In the complaint he wrote to the OnePlus support team, Himalian noted that the room temperature was maintained at 19 degrees.
"On seeing the fumes filled in the room, I immediately splashed water on to the device to douse the fumes and flames. Had I not got up at this odd hour, the mobile would have exploded and caused vital/fatal injury to me," Himalian noted in his complaint.
Through his complaint, Himalian is expecting both OnePlus and Amazon, the online seller of the product, to take responsibility and redress the grievance. The photos of the damaged OnePlus One were shared on Twitter, which shows the handset in pretty bad shape. While the display appears intact, it has ejected from the housing whereas the rear portion is completely fried.
Someone I know just got saved from fatality. @OnePlus_IN @oneplus how do you explain your phone exploding out of the blue???! Kids use your phone as it’s attractively priced. Where is the responsibility to fix this? pic.twitter.com/CRgmF6RTBB
— Chaiti Narula (@Chaiti) July 3, 2019
The exact cause of the issue remains unknown at the moment, but OnePlus has responded saying: "We take such incidents seriously. Our team has already reached out to the user and is investigating this further."
As mentioned before, mobile phone explosions aren't uncommon. Several incidents have caused serious injuries and even fatality to the owner of the phone. A lot of brands, such as Xiaomi, Motorola and others, have been associated with mobile phone explosions, but the biggest one was the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 fiasco, which drilled a deep loss into the company's pockets when the company had to recall all units and seize productions.
