Let’s face it. From electric toothbrushes to Martian rovers, our devices are complex pieces of equipment that sometimes break, sometimes with disastrous consequences. In fact, in the blogosphere it’s almost expected of any self-respecting device to go through at least one incident involving fire.

Sometimes the fault of the explosion/fire/self-destruction is a faulty battery, or some imperfect soldering. Other times, users think that drying a smartphone out in the microwave oven cannot possibly harm said smartphone. I mean, you just bombard complex electronic equipment with radiation, what can go wrong?

The newest member of the spontaneous combustion club is the Nexus 7. The images below showed up on a Chinese forum, along with a brief explanation of what supposedly happened.

The forum user says that the Nexus 7 caught on fire while it was charging unattended. The fire was powerful enough to fill the whole room with thick black smoke, which we think, caused some shock to the unlucky owner of the device. While the details are scarce, we do know that there is a happy ending to the story, as Asus replaced the burnt out Nexus 7.

Did you ever have an explosive incident with an electronic device?