There have been many exploding phone batteries in China. They are cheap nock off copies, that don't operate correctly. There have been numerous near misses, and minor injuries in the past, but I think this is the first fatality.
When I was living in China, it was often very difficult to tell which products were the genuine article. You could find tens of variations on what was meant to be the same product, and some of the copies appeared to have better manufacturing than the originals. Bit of a pain, but that's what one gets with an open, competitive, bottom dollar economy.
-Oli
