Man Sues Sony After Phone Exploded In His Hands

The 36-year-old received third-degree burns when his Sony Xperia Z2 burst into a “fireball” as he texted his girlfriend… (Are we sure he wasn’t texting an Edo babe?)

Collins who resides in Bedford was rushed to a hospital after the skin was stripped from all five fingers on his right hand.

He has been in and out of the hospital for the past three months for his recovery process and has – in that time – lost both his job and his girlfriend.

Mr Collins said: “It was the worst part of my life, it was a terrible time, it was awful, especially being on my own.

“I was in a hospital waiting room waiting for my burns to get dressed and there’s a young girl sitting there with a phone and I’m thinking ‘you don’t realise the danger’.”

The explosion happened on 24 May as Mr Collins sent his girlfriend a text on Facebook Messenger.

“It just got really hot and ‘I thought what’s going on here?’ and I heard a very minimal thud noise,” he said.

“I turned it over and there was black soot everywhere – and then there was a bright, hot Bunsen burner-like flame coming out of the back of my phone.

“It looked like a rocket and within seconds the whole thing erupted like a fireball.

“I knew the battery had exploded. I dropped it to the floor straight away and luckily I had a bottle of water next to my bed, so I threw the water over the phone to put the flames out.

“It was pure shock, it was bloody frightening. When the whole thing went up that was just panic and I dropped it, the whole carpet went up straight away.

“My hands were red raw but I got a one-and-a-half litre bucket of water on the side (to put out the fire).”

He called an ambulance from his landline and waited outside.

“At the hospital, everyone was in there was like ‘oh my god’.

“There was no skin on my fingers – the skin has just been completely removed on five fingers.

“They said it was third-degree burns and they gave me morphine and Entonox (laughing gas) but as the night went on the pain got worse.

“It literally felt like my hands had been scraped on the road at 50mph – when that pain happened it was horrendous and it was for about a week.”

Mr Collins said he lost his temp job and his partner in Birmingham broke up with him during his three-month recovery at home.

He was forced to keep his hands out of sunlight and said he lost sensation in his right index finger and thumb from his injuries.

He decided to make a claim for compensation with personal injury law firm Express Solicitors after only receiving “generic responses ” from Sony.

“Only when I contacted a solicitor did Sony take notice and then they kept calling and emailing me – trying to get me to send my phone back,” he said.

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