Reliance LYF Phone Exploded, The Owner Narrowly Escaped.

A Reliance LYF series phone exploded and caught fire on Sunday and the owner was an associate of the former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah.

Tanvir Sadiq, who narrates himself as the Political Secretary of the President of Jammu and Kashmir National Conference, said that his family had a narrow escape when the phone exploded and caught fire. He also advised all the LYF smartphone users to be more cautious while using their phones.

The LYF series was launched by Reliance with its communication network Jio and the news came even before the Samsung Note 7 explosion case has cooled down. An LYF official stated that the company was concerned about the incident and was taking the matter seriously. A proper investigation has been started and the company is keen on discovering the cause of this explosion.

The spokesperson also said that the LYF smartphone series is designed and manufactured while following world class compliances and the series is up to the mark as compared to the phones manufactured by some of the leading smartphone manufacturers.

According to Cybermedia Research, LYF holds 8% of the 4G smartphone market and is also one of the top three 4G smartphone sellers.

Some other smartphone explosion cases that occurred in the last couple of months are:
1. A OnePlus 1 smartphone caught fire in August while charging and the owner was given a new OnePlus 3 phone as compensation.
2. Samsung Galaxy Note 7 has various such incident on its name and the company has scrapped the production of this smartphone. This was considered to be one of the biggest product safety failures.
3.In September, an LYF Water 1 smartphone exploded in the hands of the user and the phone was not even plugged into a charging port.

These explosion cases are not only common in smartphones by new entrants but some of the established brands (Samsung mainly) has also suffered from these problems. Now the consumers are living in fear as the same can happen to them and are also refraining from buying new phones. This has adversely affected the smartphone market as the sales figures are at the lowest as compared to previous year sales.

Bureau of Indian Standards which is the consumer device safety regulator of India has been receiving a number of complaints, questioning the working of the bureau and till now the bureau has refrained from answering these complaints.

07 November 2016
Rohan Jaitly