iPhone 4 explodes midflight

[Chardok]

Lol, apple.

Apple’s iPhones are always among the hottest gadgets of any holiday shopping season, but for one passenger on an Australian flight, the phone was too hot to handle — literally.

While on Australian flight Regional Express ZL319 Friday, a passenger’s iPhone 4 (not the iPhone 4S, which is Apple’s latest model) suddenly started “emitting a significant amount of dense smoke, accompanied by a red glow,” according to a Regional Express statement.

The plane, which was flying from Lismore to Sydney, was in the midst of landing when the incident occured. “In accordance with company standard safety procedures, the flight attendant carried out recovery actions immediately, and the red glow was extinguished successfully,” according to Regional Express’ statement.

After landing, the iPhone was handed over to officials at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. There’s no official word yet on what caused the phone to combust.

Exploding Apple products are rare, but explosions have happened in the past, mostly related to the devices’ lithium ion batteries overheating.

The European Union launched an investigation in 2009 after multiple instances of iPhones and iPod Touches exploding or catching fire midflight were reported in the U.K., Holland, France and Sweden.

Apple also recalled its first-generation of iPod nanos sold between September 2005 and December 2006 because the battery would overheat and “pose a safety risk,” according to the company’s website

I'm not REALLY knocking apple, I just think the article is pretty amusing.

[Sarevok]

I have seen Nokias explode back in days before modern smartphones. However modern phones like iPhone have temperature sensors. The iPhone is particular has a good system. It kills power as overheating occurs and shuts down the phone to prevent damage of necessary. I wonder what went wrong.

[aerius]

I wonder what went wrong.

It's a consumer electronics product, made to shitty standards by the lowest bidder. It's a small miracle that they don't blow up or fail more often. If I had to take a guess one or more of the solder joints for the shutdown circuit failed, and instead of having a failsafe design where a failure of the safety circuit shuts down the device it instead allows the device to keep running and overheat.

[Stark]

It's way funnier when laptop batteries fail spectacularly. I'm not knocking apple, just uh... ??

And there's a reason more and more manufacturers do over the counter replacements these days. I wonder if failures are more common than in the past or are simply seen as more damaging to the brand in the age of sealed, no user serviceable products.

[someone_else]

Given what happened I'm ready to bet that it's a battery issue.

Apple stuff uses lithium polymer batteries (or at least they claim to do so).

Lithium polymer batteries can keep more power, and are cheaper than lithium ion proper. But can BURN LIKE HELL if punctured or charged wrong. Burning heh, not exploding.

Maybe that was just a defective battery or the thing was dropped from high enough for the battery to suffer minor damage that worsened itself the way lipo batteries do.

[Stark]

I'm pretty sure it was a Sony laptop that burst into flames some time ago using a similar battery.

Recently I think some consumer electronics guys sent me an email saying that if my (I want to say ipad but I can't remember) had a serial number between 1 and 7 that I should return it immediately because some part of the charge circuit was flawed and would be 'dangerous'.

I imagine they mean 'overcharge and burst into flames'. Its not really uncommon for the reasons Aerius mentions.