SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20190910-C8FB2-2147377760. Severity: Injury, No First Aid or Medical Attention Received. Product: LG Electronics LGM255 K20 (LG Cell Phone, K20 Model Number LGM255 IMEI# 355574-08-216494-3). Incident: On Jun 2nd, 2019 the battery in my son's LG K20 ( Model Number LGM255) cell phone came close to exploding / burning. He was sleeping with it about a foot from his head (he does because the alarm volume was not sufficient to wake him from the nightstand), when he woke up to a phone that had burst open and was glowing bright red, emitting smoke. As he called out to me, the fire alarm began sounding and woke me. I rushed to his room to find it full of smoke and was able to scoop the phone onto a plate and rush it outdoors before it fully exploded. I then submerged it in water to cool it down. By the appearance, it looks like we caught it just before it burst. We were lucky it did not explode in his face. The phone briefly ignited his bedding and mattress. I do have photos of the phone and damage. I have reported this to LG, but they are stonewalling me. The phone was purchased in Nov/Dec of 2017 as a Christmas present. The phone was not plugged in to charge at the time it burst. It has always been in a case and he had not dropped it at any point. This is the original battery. There is no way his actions could have caused a puncture of the battery which would lead to this reaction. This phone was only about a 1 & 1/2 years old. I cannot find any information about this happening in other K20s, but needed to let you know in case there are other occurrences. This phone is just out of warranty, but I feel that this damage is due to an obvious defect in the battery.