Are Droid Smartphones Safe?

In December 2010, a man in Texas made a surprising claim about his Droid 2 smartphone.  He claims that while he was talking to his father, the phone exploded in his ear, requiring stitches and bringing to light concerns about the safety of smartphones. 

This announcement couldn’t have come at a worse time for the phone’s maker, Motorola, as the company is in the process of branching its smartphone division into a separate entity.  The question now is whether the Droid and other smartphones are really safe, and whether or not ‘the Texas Incident’ could ever happen again and bring up a host of charges from the user’s attorneys.

The story regarding the Droid in Texas is certainly frightening, but thus far it is an isolated incident.  Other smartphone problems have been reported in the past, including overheating with the iPhone, but there have been no real safety concerns outside of this issue. 

Motorola is currently looking into what happened in this incident, but so far it genuinely looks as though there is no problem with smartphones in terms of safety.  Thankfully, the Droid explosion seems to truly be one of a kind.

While there’s a risk that Droid sales will drop in light of this event, consumer groups and smartphone makers do not seem too concerned with safety issues.  These phones have been on the market for a while now, and this is the first and only incident of this type.  This is certainly good news for Droid users and for Motorola, and it seems likely that the investigation will turn up no safety issues for Droids or other smartphones.