I was using the Mi A1 phone for the past 3 years. I did not have any complaints on the phone and it was all good. I was basically using it to the maximum of my needs where I had so many applications installed and it worked very well for me. This has been one of the best-used phones that I have ever held so far.

Unfortunately, the phone caught on fire yesterday. It was a very sad moment. We were lying in the bed and watching a movie on the TV. I plugged my phone into a charger and I didn't even disturb the phone while charging. Suddenly we heard a huge noise with a small wizzle kind of thing. We immediately got up and were trying to understand what was happening around us.

There was a huge smoke around the room. We understood that something was burning. I immediately thought it was some kind of short circuit in the electricity and tried to find out more details. We noticed that within a span of 5 to 10 seconds, my phone was literally turning into ashes in front of my eyes. There was no fire as such but it was burning heavily from the inside. I didn't even imagine that this much intense heat would be exerted out of it and would burn the phone completely.

When I saw it burning, I immediately tried to remove the charger from it. Even now there is nothing wrong with the charger. It is all looking good. Only the back cover of the mobile was a little safe as it was metallic. Everything else completely turned into ashes. Even the plastic armor case that I had for the phone was also burned out. The place was also filled with black ash everywhere. It took a long time for the smoke to get out of the room.

I couldn't imagine what went wrong over there because I don't see any traces of any issue with the electricity. Maybe the problem is just with the phone alone, either the battery or the board. Maybe the phone couldn't withstand overcharging and the electric energy would have got converted to heat energy and it blasted out. We did not hear any blasting sound but it was all full of smoke and we saw it burning. The phone was also pealed off to different parts while burning.

I couldn't even look for my sim card slot or memory card slot to take them out. It was also fully damaged while burning. I will now have to apply for a new sim card and bear with the loss of data from internal memory and the memory card as well. Hopefully, there shouldn't be any big loss in terms of data.

I have seen videos and have also heard this from many sources. It was pretty strange to see this happening for me directly. Good thing is that this didn't happen when I was holding the phone in my hand. I couldn't even imagine what would have happened to my hands in that case. Also what if something like this had happened when we were sleeping and hadn't noticed it. So, just to be clear in the future, I'm going to be taking the following precautions:

• I'm going to take this as a big lesson to not use my mobile phone when it is charging.
• Not attend calls or messages when my mobile phone is charging.
• Better to do the charging when I'm awake than leaving it to charge overnight.
• Avoid overcharging the phone. Though all the phones have the facility to handle overcharging, from this incident, I understand that we cannot trust it completely.
• Better to always keep the phone away from the bed and other sources when it is charging to prevent any disasters.
• If we experience heat issues in the phone, it is better to get it sorted immediately or to cool it down a little bit by switching it off for a while.
• The same applies to charging with a power bank as well. Even when we are using power banks, it is better to let the charging happen separately and not directly in our hands or pockets or even in the bags.
• Always better to use only the charger that is compatible with the phone. Company charger is always the best choice. Even otherwise, better to check the compatibility clearly before using any different charger.

Not just me but I would request all the mobile users to take the above precautions seriously while using your mobile phones. We all know that technology is a boon but sometimes it can also turn out to be a bane. It is up to us to stay safe. Maybe this doesn't happen to everyone but one in a thousand but always better to be safe than sorry.

I don't know to what extent I have lost the data from my phone. I know I was using Google Authenticator for some of my apps. I'm still yet to explore how I can recover those applications for a lost phone scenario. I might have to contact the application owners or helpdesk to get the access back.

I'm really glad that I did not have any private keys or mobile wallets stored on my phone. That gives me great relief. There were a few applications that I used on my mobile phone but fortunately, I guess they are all recoverable through my email address. Let me explore that when I'm ready with a new phone.