Gurgaon: iPhone 6 ‘explodes’ in middle of call

An iPhone 6 user from Gurgaon has alleged his two-day-old handset exploded while he was making a call. The user escaped without injuries as the call was made in hands-free mode.

An iPhone 6 user from Gurgaon has alleged his two-day-old handset exploded while he was making a call. The user, a 30-year-old man who runs a pub in Gurgaon's Sector 56, escaped without injuries as the call was made in hands-free mode.

Kishan Yadav said he bought his 64GB grey iPhone 6 from a well-known store for ₹60,000 on June 18. Two days after he bought the Apple flagship, he was in his car on MG Road in Gurgaon, talking to a friend using the phone's hands-free mode, when he noticed sparks emerging from the phone.

He realised the phone had become very hot and threw it out of his car. It then exploded as soon as it made contact with the ground, he alleged.

'On Saturday, I was on call with my friend and had put the call on speaker. After a few minutes, I suddenly realised there was a spark in the mobile set and I got scared of the blast. I immediately threw the mobile phone out of the window on the road and within few seconds the mobile phone exploded,' Yadav said.

Brand new iPhone 6 explodes http://t.co/fwBaJHKUaJpic.twitter.com/InN7GcVQaX

— TechnoBuffalo (@TechnoBuffalo) June 25, 2015

Yadav returned to the store where he bought the iPhone 6 and was told he needed to contact Apple directly. The store said it would hold on to the phone and get back to Yadav with an update.

He then filed a complaint with police. 'I asked them why should I wait for two weeks, it's a new mobile and I have paid a huge amount for it. I did not get a satisfactory reply and I immediately reported the matter to the Sushant Lok police station,' Yadav said.

It could not be immediately ascertained whether Yadav had received a replacement unit.

Assistant commissioner of police (DLF) Ramesh Pal said: 'We have registered the case but this is not a case of explosion, we are conducting an investigation into the reason of the spark. The mobile phone is damaged and the reason is still unknown'.

An Apple representative told the media that the company was looking into the incident and that it had not previously received any similar complaint about the iPhone 6 in India.

This is apparently the first such case reported in India since the launch of the iPhone 6 last October.

However, similar incidents are not completely unheard of. A man from Long Island in New York was hospitalised for 10 days after his iPhone 5C gave him third-degree burns when it began burning in his front leg pocket.

Last April, a man from Minnesota was admitted to hospital for over a week due to his faulty iPhone wall charger exploding when he plugged in his iPhone 5.