BEIJING: It wasn’t long ago when Samsung galaxy note 7 virtually became a symbol of scare for users…but now iPhones are now seemingly not either trustable with latest spate of incidents in China.

A Chinese consumer watchdog said that eight iPhones had exploded – with models including iPhone 6 and iPhone 6S.

Shanghai Consumer Council said that it had seen an eight-fold rise in complaints in the past eight weeks.

A spokesman said, ‘Apple should be responsible for consumers. A lot of consumer complaints are not solved effectively.’

The report from the Shanghai Consumer Council was posted Friday.

It quoted one woman as saying her iPhone 6s Plus exploded in August, shattering the screen and leaving the battery and back of the phone blackened.

Meanwhile, Apple has blamed “external physical damage” for causing a handful of iPhones to explode or catch fire in China and insisted that its handsets posed no safety problem.

Fresh on the heels of Samsung’s worldwide Galaxy Note 7 safety fiasco, a Shanghai consumer watchdog said last Friday it had received eight recent reports of iPhones that spontaneously combusted while being used or charged.

In a statement to AFP late Tuesday, the US tech giant said it had retrieved units for analysis and conducted thorough tests on phones which had experienced “thermal events”, but brushed off safety concerns.

“The units we’ve analysed so far have clearly shown that external physical damage happened to them which led to the thermal event,” the statement said.

“We treat safety as a top priority and have found no cause for concern with these products.”

The company also denied being slow to respond, after the state-run Shanghai Consumer Council had urged it to address consumer complaints.

It’s not the first report of iPhones exploding, as an Australian driver returned to his car in October after a surf lesson – and found his iPhone smouldering, and the car filled with smoke.

Mat Jones claims that the iPhone was brand new – just seven days old – and that he had only used official accessories to charge it. Jones says he placed the phone under his clothes, and returned to the car to find it full of smoke.

South Korean electronics firm Samsung was recently forced to recall some 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7 handsets, following a safety scandal that saw batteries catching fire.

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WATCH: iPhone 7 explodes and sets fire to car