For your safety, don't buy fakes: Nokia

Product safety is a top priority at Nokia and users should purchase genuine products to ensure their safety, said the Finnish phone maker in response to a recent report of a man killed by an exploding Nokia phone.

(Nokia mobile image by Clive Darr, CC BY-SA 2.0)

According to media reports last week, an Indian man was believed to have died from a mobile phone explosion. Local police deduced from forensic investigations that the man's Nokia 1209 was struck by lightning leading to the explosion, said the reports. According to The Times of India, the government had ordered an investigation into the explosion.

While Nokia was unable to comment on the incident, it that said that product safety, quality and reliability are the company's top priorities and its manufacturing facilities follow "very stringent quality standards".

Apart from its own quality standards, the phone maker's devices and accessories are tested against and comply with known, internationally recognised quality standards, the Nokia spokesperson said in an email interview.

The company also advised customers to buy authorised devices and genuine batteries and accessories as these would have gone through the same "stringent quality and safety standards" at its factories.

In the Asia-Pacific region, genuine products often compete with grey market products such as bandit phones, which are knockoffs of branded phones.

An industry analyst, however, brushed aside labelling bandit phones as hazardous. In a previous ZDNet Asia report, Bryan Wang, Asia-Pacific research director for connectivity and country manager of China at Springboard Research, said reports of exploding bandit phones were not significantly higher than other established brands.

Even devices from companies lauded for their strict quality control are sometimes too hot to handle. In Japan, for instance, a rush-hour train came to a halt last week for eight minutes to investigate a burning smell in the carriage. The culprit was later identified to be a melting Apple iPod.

Apple did not respond to questions about the overheated iPod.

The company's Japan office in mid-August offered to replace first-generation iPod Nanos to address complaints of overheating batteries.