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Apple Digging into Accounts of iPhone Explosions in Europe

It's the new 007phone! It hisses, you throw it behind you, and explode your enemies who are of course chasing you! :p

In all seriousness, though, I suspect this is probably a battery problem. Always is with this stuff.
 
fortetfn said:
Maybe because the voltage in Europe is higher, it somehow damaged the battery cells during the charge in his iPhone.

I heard a little sorta like hissing sound while I was on the phone. It sounded like a hard drive on my laptop. Hope it's not the same as his.
Click to expand...

:D:D:D:D eh, or its not what you think. You have the charger in between so it really doesn't matter if its Europe or US.

What might explain this is bad batch of iPhones.
 
armoguy94 said:
Why does Apple always have to be so careless and not even apologize or show at least SOME sympathy?! Even thats unlikely though... apple does not even care about its employees and treats them as animals.
Click to expand...

what's your company please?

Let me just quickly order one of your products, throw it in the ground and post a picture here. I will then say it made a hissing sound and killed my cat. I will then expect an immediate apology on the net from you and your company, thereby totally substantiating an otherwise so far one in a billion claim and have your company look ridiculous.

NEXT.
 
I should develop an app that harnesses this power, making the iPhone blow up when you want it to. It could be used in many self defense situations. I shall call it something like iGernade, or iDynamite.
 
Tommigun said:
Yeah, the engineers didn't realize the voltage is different. Sounds veeery plausible.
Click to expand...

ROFL. Apple is one American company that actually takes that into account, correct. I don't want to go there really and I do like a lot about America, but let's just say a LOT of companies - incl. software developers, generally give f--a--- about "OTHER" standards. Like date formats. Or things based on a system of tens... etc. :)
 
Obviously, somebody will write an iPhone app that makes the screen appear cracked. Users of the app will show it at the store, demand compensation, but keep their phone, then quit the app and start all over again. But after the 3rd or 4th cracked screen it might start to seem slightly suspicious. :rolleyes:

If this story is true, it's a shame that someone was injured, and I hope they can identify the circumstances that caused it to crack. I doubt they will have to recall every iPhone on the planet, but we should at least know what made it happen.
 
It hissed...how much more of a warning does a person need? Sounds like a perfectly functional preemptive explosion alert system...that's a feature, baby!!
 
Hi
DogHouseDub said:
It hissed...how much more of a warning does a person need? Sounds like a perfectly functional preemptive explosion alert system...that's a feature, baby!!
Click to expand...
Maybe it should have started ticking. That's a little more obvious bomb hint. :D :D :D
 
Over the weekend my iPhone 3GS got super hot and the screen cracked. It was on the standard Apple charger. The "Genius" at the store claimed one of my liquid indicators was triggered but the phone has never been near water. It's always been either in the dock on my desk or on my belt. I am honest and when something gets damaged by me I accept responsibility. I am starting to think there is more to it and I just got screwed out of $200...
 
paris-hilton_thats_hot.jpg
 
Sounds fishy to me, I'm thinking this is the same overexaggerated story as that "overheating iPhone discoloration" story (which had nothing to do with the iPhone).

I'm sure there is some specific reason for the "exploding" to happen. Un-approved aftermarket battery replacement, tampering, non-approved aftermarket charger, etc. etc. I'm sure that if the phones had a real problem, there would have been reports in the US long ago (being that we have more iPhones here than anywhere else).
 
Benjamindaines said:
I'm skeptical. How is it that everytime Apple releases something (iPhone or iPod) there's always at least 3 reports of them exploding? It never happens in the US, always in Europe or the odd case Japan.
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Could be legit, but on this scale I doubt Apple has much say in it. A hissing is almost certainly related to the battery. Liquid, heat, a rare engineering fault--any number of things could cause a handful of incidents like this when there are millions of products out there, but at this scale it would be hyperbole to suggest that it is an engineering fault in the construction of the iPhone.

We just hear about it because it is Apple.
 
This is most likely due to the lithium ion battery - lithium is explosive stuff! While it's terrible that a handful exploded, it's not to be expected. If you've made millions upon millions of iPhones, you're bound to get a few that have batteries that malfunction. Of course, you only hear about the 2 or 3 that have problems, and not the other 99.9999% that have no problems at all. I really don't expect this to be a huge deal.
 
If you want to see some photos of this (rich) teenager look here and here

h-20-1655377-1250091265.jpg


You can see that the iPhone works so I don't think it is a battery problem, there is not a single point of impact. Maybe a temperature chock of the glass ? But I doubt about that, the temperature in Provence was not really warm.

h-20-1655368-1250090485.jpg


The problem was the Apple communication, telling that it cannot happen and providing him no solution, just ignoring what happened to him. So he turn to the press, and so the *****torm began.
 
*LTD* said:
Bogus.
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I want more information and until then, I totally agree that this is bogus.

It seems like everyone posting on this thread just automatically assumes that this is Apple's is going to be liable. How do we know that this person was not doing something stupid? This guy could have dropped it and a piece of the screen came up into his eye.

If it is legit, well, then that sucks. Posters....just think things through before you post.....it does not really hurt to think.......
 
Hattig said:
So, what we might have is a faulty battery expanding, and exerting pressure on the display, which has a glass front, and the pressure grew to a point where the screen shattered. It's not an "explosion" really.

The problem is with millions of devices, a few will get faulty batteries - a third party component remember.

Apple might have to tweak the design to stop the pressure having an effect on the screen - maybe some bars/grids for rigidity behind the display.
Click to expand...

yep. sums it up.

the board separates the batter and the glass, so the path of least resistance will probably give first (back housing).

The customer should have experienced issues long before the shattering point, and at least one would warrant a trip to the nearest AppleStore.
They would check for abuse, try to reproduce the error, and send you out the door with a new iPhone if everything went smoothly. But, I suspect some sort of physical damage / liquid damage that the customer did not want to shine light upon.

Glass in the eye? Apple would like to see your medical documents before they fall for that hogwash. Their case will get thrown out of court. You cant sue the makers of Brillo if a particle of their product gets embedded in your eye for some odd reason.

I really hope Apple goes through with putting innovated shock sensors in more products. https://www.macrumors.com/2009/08/06/apple-researching-methods-to-detect-consumer-abuse-in-portable-devices/
More security for those of us who don"t treat their equipment like *expletive*, and a big *expletive* from Apple, to those that do
 
traemirc said:
yep. sums it up.

the board separates the batter and the glass, so the path of least resistance will probably give first (back housing).

The customer should have experienced issues long before the shattering point, and at least one would warrant a trip to the nearest AppleStore.
They would check for abuse, try to reproduce the error, and send you out the door with a new iPhone if everything went smoothly. But, I suspect some sort of physical damage / liquid damage that the customer did not want to shine light upon.

Glass in the eye? Apple would like to see your medical documents before they fall for that hogwash. Their case will get thrown out of court. You cant sue the makers of Brillo if a particle of their product gets embedded in your eye for some odd reason.

I really hope Apple goes through with putting innovated shock sensors in more products. https://www.macrumors.com/2009/08/06/apple-researching-methods-to-detect-consumer-abuse-in-portable-devices/
More security for those of us who don"t treat their equipment like *expletive*, and a big *expletive* from Apple, to those that do
Click to expand...

The guy only said it was a little chunk of glass, like a grain of sand, and he had no injury, he also said he loved apple product and just wanted to know what happened, but the lack of apple communication encourage him to tell the press.
 
hok said:
If you want to see some photos of this (rich) teenager look here and here

http://medias.lepost.fr/ill/2009/08/12/h-20-1655377-1250091265.jpg

You can see that the iPhone works so I don't think it is a battery problem, there is not a single point of impact. Maybe a temperature chock of the glass ? But I doubt about that, the temperature in Provence was not really warm.

http://medias.lepost.fr/ill/2009/08/12/h-20-1655368-1250090485.jpg

The problem was the Apple communication, telling that it cannot happen and providing him no solution, just ignoring what happened to him. So he turn to the press, and so the *****torm began.
Click to expand...

Wow. nice post Hok! I can rant more rofl.
It looks beat up pretty bad, check out the bezel.
The crack pattern seems to have many, many points.
Maybe the customer sat on it while the iPhone was glass side down on jagged pavement?

Street-Pavement-Background.jpg
 
fortetfn said:
Maybe because the voltage in Europe is higher, it somehow damaged the battery cells during the charge in his iPhone.
Click to expand...

People are saying correctly that the charger would convert the voltage from whatever the mains are to some lower voltage used by the phone. So in theory the local mains voltage should not mater.

But, the European chargers are likely a different design from those sold in North America. Those European chargers could have a design defect that causes one out of a million of them to fail in a bad way.

It is hard to design electronic equipment such that when the equipment breaks, it breaks in a safe way. For example the phone is plugged into a wall charger and you have the earphones on. What happens if lightening strikes a power pole a mile from the house? The wall wort transformer needs to be designed to that even after the 1000 volt pulse has melted some internal parts none of the mains voltage gets onto the low voltage cable.

It's my guess is that the Europe design charger has failed in some exotic way the engineers did not think of.
 
Wow - this board is sick...

<rant>

If all you fanboys would please acknowledge that the European courts will never judge in favor of the customer and rule high penalties. That guy had an issue with his phone, no more no less.

This is nothing like the typical American compensation lawsuits, that we Europeans love to make fun of.
</rant>

Even if that guy had a severe eye injury leading to blindness on one eye, his compensation would be clearly below €250,000. So this is clearly no 'nonsense lawsuit to make money'-thing. It would be more like that, if it had happened in Texas. :D
 
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