KUALA LUMPUR, June 16 — Malaysiakini has reported that a phone had caught fire when a nine-year-old student was having his online classes on Monday. From the image, it appears to be a Yes Altitude 3, which is a free phone that’s distributed under the Jaringan Prihatin Programme.

The boy’s aunt Suryani Abd Ghani had posted her experience on Facebook and has urged Yes to be responsible as the phone is barely a month old. She told Malaysiakini that it happened around 9.30am at their home in Gombak. She was shaken by the incident but was fortunate that nobody was hurt. She said on her Facebook post that it was fortunate that she was at home during the incident.

Suryani who is a kindergarten teacher said her husband had helped her nephew to apply for the phone as the student’s laptop was old and lagging. She added that the free phone was prone to overheating and the battery drained quickly. She told Malaysiakini "Even if it’s a free mobile device, don’t give something like this because it’s dangerous”.

Recently, the Perak state government had also distributed 20,000 phones which appeared to be the same Yes Altitude 3. As reported by Harian Metro, Chairman of Education, Higher Learning and Human Resources Committee Ahmad Saidi Mohamad Daud said the free phones are of low quality to prevent the devices to be used for gaming.

According to the spec-sheet on Yes’ website, the Yes Altitude 3 is a very low-spec phone. It gets a 5.0″ 854×480 pixels resolution display, a 1.3GHz MediaTek MT6379WA processor with 1GB RAM and 8GB of storage, and a small 2,000mAh battery. Despite its dated hardware, it still supports VoLTE.

Out of the box, it runs on Android 10 (Go Edition) which provides a lightweight experience of Android. Although users can install full Android apps from the Google Play Store, many had questioned if the phone is actually capable of handling required apps for online learning.

Besides offering a free phone, the Jaringan Prihatin bundle from Yes also provides 30GB of data for 12 months and it isn’t tied to a contract. — SoyaCincau