OnePlus Nord 2 5G Allegedly Explodes Just Days After Purchase, Company Responds to Announce Investigation

A five-day-old OnePlus Nord 2 5G allegedly exploded in the sling bag of a woman in Bengaluru on Sunday. The spouse of the affected user took to Twitter just hours after the incident to inform the public about the sudden accident. He, however, pulled the tweet shortly after it came into the limelight. OnePlus has confirmed to Gadgets 360 that it reached out to the user and was investigating the issue. The OnePlus Nord 2 5G was launched as the latest smartphone by Chinese company last month.

Twitter user Ankur Sharma reported that the OnePlus Nord 2 explosion took place on Sunday morning, when his wife had gone out cycling with the smartphone in her sling bag.

“All of a sudden [the] phone blasted and smoke started coming out of it. Due to this blast, she met with an accident,” the user said in a tweet that he pulled later but its cached version was available at the time of filing this story. He also posted three photos purportedly showing the exploded OnePlus Nord 2 5G.

OnePlus Nord 2 5G allegedly exploded in just a week after its purchase
Photo Credit: Twitter/ Ankur Sharma

The official OnePlus Support account on Twitter responded to Sharma's tweet and asked him to communicate with the company over a direct message.

It is currently unclear whether OnePlus compensated the affected user for the alleged blast. Sharma didn't respond to a direct message on Twitter asking whether he was reached out by the company for the compensation.

In an emailed statement to Gadgets 360, a OnePlus spokesperson said that it was currently investigating the issue. “We take such incidents seriously. Our team has already reached out to the user and is investigating this further,” the spokesperson said.

Gadgets 360 sent a couple of follow-up questions to the company asking whether prima facie evidence suggested the issue happened due to inappropriate usage or because of a manufacturing defect, and whether the company asked the user to pull the tweet posted by the spouse of the user. The spokesperson, however, didn't respond until the time of publishing.

Update: In an updated statement, OnePlus noted: "We reached out to the concerned user immediately after hearing about this incident and initiated a thorough internal investigation. The results indicate that the damage to this device was caused by an isolated incident involving external factors and not due to any manufacturing or product issue. However, we remain in close touch with this user and have offered our support to address their concerns and ensure their wellbeing." The full statement is at the end of this article.

The OnePlus Nord 2 was launched last month and went on sale in India just last week. It carries a handful of upgrades over the original OnePlus Nord, and one of them is a bigger battery of 4,500mAh capacity — with Warp Charge 65 fast charging. The phone is also the first in the company's portfolio to carry a MediaTek Dimensity SoC over a Qualcomm chipset.

Notably, this is not the first time a OnePlus smartphone exploded. A OnePlus One caught fire and blew up in July 2019. The company interestingly responded to that incident with an identical statement.

In addition to OnePlus phones, multiple reports of phones from brands including Apple, Samsung, and Xiaomi exploding and catching fire surfaced in the last few years.

Update: The full statement from OnePlus is shown below.

“Our top priority is the health and safety of our customers. We reached out to the concerned user immediately after hearing about this incident and initiated a thorough internal investigation. The results indicate that the damage to this device was caused by an isolated incident involving external factors and not due to any manufacturing or product issue. However, we remain in close touch with this user and have offered our support to address their concerns and ensure their wellbeing.

We would like to assure our customers that our products undergo thorough quality and safety tests, including various levels of pressure and impact tests, to ensure they are up to industry-leading standards and remain safe to use.”