14 DAY TRIAL // With phones going boom every once in a while, this appears to be just the right time for hoaxers to make some money without moving a single finger, all by claiming that their devices exploded and threatening to sue.
A similar case was close to happening in Taipei last week, as a man slashed his hand on purpose and then claimed that his phone exploded due to overheating.
As China Post reports, it all took place in the Taipei Metro on Wednesday morning, when a man called Chen broke his phone and then attempted to cause some injuries with a fragment of the device. When he started bleeding, he screamed for the emergency services, claiming that his HTC phone burst into flames.
After so many reports of phones that caught fire all of a sudden, including a global recall of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7, local authorities rushed to the scene to treat the injuries.
HTC says it was all just a hoax
And yet, after starting an investigation and analyzing images offered by the metro surveillance system, the police discovered that the man actually caused the minor injury himself for a reason that is yet to be disclosed. According to the aforementioned report, the man is a psychiatric patient and had been mentally unstable lately.
It goes without saying that after news of a phone explosion was all over the news, HTC attempted to contact the man several times, but company officials later announced that it was all just a hoax and its phone did not explode.
And yet, HTC does have a reason to be worried about, as another report claims that an HTC 10 exploded, causing burns and an eye infection to its owner. The company was already investigating, though the owner said that HTC did not respond until the story was published on Facebook and made the headlines.
It remains to be seen how this investigation ends up, but in the meantime, there is no known confirmation of an exploding HTC smartphone.