Commuters on the North-East Line had their travel time delayed in the evening rush hour, and it’s through no fault of SBS Transit. No, passengers had to be evacuated from the cabins when a commuter’s mobile phone started emitting smoke.
An SBS Transit spokesperson confirmed to the media that passengers had to be evacuated as a safety precaution around 6:30pm yesterday at Dhoby Ghaut MRT Station. The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) and the Singapore Police Force’s Public Transport Security Command were even activated as a “safety measure,” though their assistance was no longer needed when staff found out that it was just a malfunctioning smartphone.
The train seriously fucking terminated at Dhoby Ghaut when I just stepped in. What a bitch. There wasn’t even a notice on the screen.
— ً (@onelastIove) February 19, 2019
A witness informed The Straits Times that he had been standing close to the owner of the phone on the Punggol-bound train when thick smoke started coming out from the device.
“The phone owner was just chatting with another two friends,” according to the man’s account to ST. “But suddenly, he struggled to retrieve his phone, before throwing it down onto the floor.”
Though there was no fire, the witness mentioned that the phone burned a slight hole in the owner’s back pocket. After initially misidentifying it as Oppo phone, ST now believes that the smoking device was an Honor smartphone, a sub-brand of Chinese tech giant Huawei.
MRT train evacuated at Dhoby Ghaut https://t.co/G31dX9wPie pic.twitter.com/CfRV58oBmg
— AsiaOne (@asiaonecom) February 20, 2019
Passengers had to exit the entire train at Dhoby Ghaut MRT station, and the empty train routed back to Sengkang Depot. SCDF officers who helped with the investigations at the depot confirmed later that the cause was “accidental and of electrical origin.”
If it is true that it was an Honor phone, this could be the first reported case of a potentially dangerous defect involving the relatively new smartphone brand. Huawei established the Honor series in 2013 to help compete in the budget smartphone market, and more recently, the brand made headlines as one of the first manufacturers to release a smartphone with a hole-punch display.
The incident does throw some light on the potential risk of malfunctioning phones. Last year, a Malaysian CEO died from injuries sustained when his phone exploded in his sleep. He had two phones — a BlackBerry and a Huawei — and nobody knows which one exploded.
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