I'm pretty sure the second media source specifically stated it was a "mod" device or whatever.
That said, whatever device is used to vape, and whether or not it explodes, it is hazardous to your health and will eventually cause death. Years ago people thought smoking was healthy, and look where we are now!
I remember this article going around. The device being used in this case was what is called a mech or mechanical mod. There is a huge difference between this and a regulated box mod. Regulated devices have internal circuits that do many things. Allowing you to adjust the wattage/voltage/temp settings (temperature control is based on specific metals resistance changing at a specific rate with temp that the device can measure), along with battery protection for charging and discharging (never trust this on these devices as it is added after the fact), but mostly protect the cells from over discharging. With the mechanical mods, there is nothing but a metal tube, one wire, and a fire switch. When you build with these, you need to build the coils to a general range of resistance to prevent over-discharging from the battery. The vast majority of "exploding vape pens" are of this type. This usually happens from either one or a combination of two factors. Incorrect coil resistance for the batteries used, or cheap/faulty/mislabeled/counterfeit batteries. Even then, the majority of issues like this just causes venting with actual explosions being rare. More common with sealed off mech mods that have no vent holes in the device itself.
There have been a couple of regulated devices that have had issues. However, the majority of these were due to the manufacturer of the mods being sold batteries that for whatever reason, weren't capable of standing up to what they were being sold as and were effectively being over discharged. One device in specific (I had one of these) had this issue, plus an electronics malfunction that it would randomly just fire and bypass the industry standard 10 second shut off. My mod started doing this but at least not constantly. It did it twice, and I disassembled the mod, and cut the wire to the battery.
Side note, vaping is not considered safe or healthy. It is at least considered a safer/healthier alternative to tobacco.