A man has died after his mobile phone exploded, severing a major artery in his neck, according to reports.
The man, thought to be a shop assistant in his twenties at a computer shop in
Guangzhou, China, died after he put a
new battery in his phone. It was believed that he may have just finished charging the battery and had put the phone in his breast pocket when it exploded.
According to the local Chinese daily
Shin Min Daily News, the accident happened on
January 30. An employee at the shop told Chinese media that she heard a loud bang and saw her colleague lying on the floor of the shop in a pool of blood. The employee said the victim had recently changed the battery in his mobile phone.
Chinese authorities
have yet to determine the make and model of the phone and its battery. Police were investigating whether the phone and battery were
counterfeit.
Local reports said that this was the
ninth recorded cellphone explosion in China since 2002. In the most high profile recent incident, in June 2007, a 22-year-old welder,
Xiao Jinpeng, died from
chest wounds when his mobile phone exploded while he was at work at an iron mill in Gansu province.
Lithium batteries are widely used in mobile phones - but if they are overcharged or exposed to heat, the inflammable liquid inside
can explode.
Motorola and
Nokia, two of the world's biggest mobile phone makers, denied links to the distributors of problem batteries in China, suggesting they were counterfeit.
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