This is the third reported case of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 exploding in India. This is the second time Xiaomi's most popular smartphone has exploded while charging. Although the first case was allegedly caused by using a third party charger, this time around the owner says that the original charger was used.
According to the owner of the phone, Ronak Dagha Aym, his mom was sitting on the sofa and the phone was charging. All of a sudden there was a lot of smoke coming from the phone but no flame. Then the phone started burning from the inside out and then it exploded into parts and the back case fell open. I am paraphrasing here but this is the gist of what we have come to know.
Again, there are several reasons for a phone battery to explode including tampering, using faulty chargers or physical damage to the device which may have injured the battery. The owner of the exploded Redmi Note 4 has confirmed that there was no physical damage to the device, and he was using the charger that came with the phone. The device was purchased from Flipkart in June 2017.
Thankfully, no injury was reported other than his mom being a bit shaken. Although this could have gone a lot worse if the phone had exploded near a night stand next to a bed or in the owners pocket as the second Redmi Note 4 had done. Given this is the 3rd case among millions of phones sold, it may be a very specific issue with a few units or possibly with how the device is handled. However, we do not have complete information on the device and we would leave it to Xiaomi to get to the bottom on why this occurred.
Ronak will be going to the Prime Mall (Irla) Xiaomi service center and has said will be recording the conversation there. We have reached out to Xiaomi for a comment, but have yet to hear back. We will update the story with inputs from both Ronak and Xiaomi.
