Imagine saving up to buy that shiny piece of kit that you wanted since the day it was announced, and grabbing one when you’ve finally saved just enough to get it. You get back home, and can’t wait to play with your new toy. You start loading all those processor-pushing games that lagged terribly on your older tablet, and then realize that the battery is down to 5%.

You think it might be a good idea to plug it in and power the battery up before you load all the stuff that you want to show off to your mates the next morning. Plus all the online manuals and forums advise a few full discharge and charge cycles the first few days. Cool, so you plug it in, and doze off dreaming about all the jealous looks you are going to get the next day. Come morning, and you wake up coughing, and the room is full of sooty black smoke. You open the windows, turn on the lights and almost have a heart attack when you see what’s left of your new toy (See pic above)

This is probably how the tragedy panned out, with an unfortunate user in China who reported this case of spontaneous combustion with his Nexus 7. The battery apparently went poof at night, and by the time the owner realized what had happened (He was probably sleeping, like the poor chap in the example above) the room was full of smoke and the Nexus 7 was history. As you can see from the pic above, the rubberized back section where the battery pack resides is completely disfigured and looks melted. That must be some heat that must have been generated to cause that.

Whether it was a faulty battery, or a faulty power plug that caused the Nexus 7 to go boom, is still unclear. The damaged tablet was returned to Asus, which immediately replaced it with a brand new one, no questions asked. Asus is apparently trying to assess what could have caused this mess. And if it’s a faulty part, they would want to fix it soon. Considering the Nexus 7 has been out for a while now, and this is perhaps the first case of an exploding battery being reported, it is unlikely that there could have been a faulty part, but then, stranger things have been known to happen.

Have a look at the rest of the pics of the tragic Nexus 7.

As I mentioned earlier, the fact that Asus replaced the tablet without any arguments speaks volumes about their customer service for the Nexus 7. More so, because the Nexus 7 was never officially released in China, and the user had probably purchased a Hong Kong version off the gray market.

Phew! Certainly not a sight, or smell, any of us would like to wake up to. We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.