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Chinese Consumer Group Complains of Spontaneous iPhone 6 Fires, but Apple Blames 'Physical Damage'
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I took my 2014 6 in today to my local Apple Store. Only ever used Apple chargers. I noticed 2 months ago the phone would 1) restart over night sometimes. 2) Sometimes the charge would suddenly drop from 80% to 20% but the phone was cool not running warm. Plug the phone back into charger and literally seconds later my charge was back to 80%. Apple Store diagnostics cannot find a problem. The did a battery "reset" in the back. Came back, said everything looked good.
Problem Description/Diagnosis
Issue: Customer presents unit that loses a charge very quickly, then charges up to 50% very quickly
Steps to Reproduce: Observed issue in store
No issues on diagnostics
Observed very slight swelling of battery
Cosmetic Condition: Overall good / no noticeable damage
Proposed Resolution: Replace whole unit at cost of battery
Again, this is a 6 not a 6s.
I started a ticket with Apple (internet not face to face) while the phone was still under AppleCare warranty, but the jokers wanted proof of purchase. I pointed out that I bought the phone at the Apple Store in my own name and they should have a record of it, I had the order number. Nope, not good enough. So I am paying the $80 for a replacement phone, when it arrives at the store in 3-5 business days.
Problem Description/Diagnosis
Issue: Customer presents unit that loses a charge very quickly, then charges up to 50% very quickly
Steps to Reproduce: Observed issue in store
No issues on diagnostics
Observed very slight swelling of battery
Cosmetic Condition: Overall good / no noticeable damage
Proposed Resolution: Replace whole unit at cost of battery
Again, this is a 6 not a 6s.
I started a ticket with Apple (internet not face to face) while the phone was still under AppleCare warranty, but the jokers wanted proof of purchase. I pointed out that I bought the phone at the Apple Store in my own name and they should have a record of it, I had the order number. Nope, not good enough. So I am paying the $80 for a replacement phone, when it arrives at the store in 3-5 business days.
Yes, I meant this in the sense that there aren't a great many complaints suggesting a manufacturing issue. I'll update the wording in the post to be more clear. Appreciate the feedback!
Appears no more than a feeble attempt on the part of the Chinese to shed negative light on Apple in the face of the latter's business inroads into the local economy.
It's hard to overlook the very plausible possibility that the Chinese government is not thrilled with Apple's successes in their country, and would much rather support their own companies such as Huawei and Xiaomi, etc., and that's an obvious understatement. A little negative publicity for Apple goes a long way towards helping their own brands.
Currently being the world's dominant manufacturer of consumer goods has given them more than "a healthy amount" of economic leverage, but with increasingly protectionist sentiments in the West, that balance could shift away from China in the future.
It would be smart for them to remember they reap great benefits from Apple's manufacturing on their soil.
Well... I'm sure Apple is right. There had to have been physical damage.
I'm sure Apple performed extensive visual inspections to determine that there was most definitely physical damage on the phones that spontaneously burned.
Strangely, I came to the same conclusion after simply hearing that the phones had caught on fire. Most assuredly there is physical damage. It was on fire.
Rather than fight at every chance, Apple should simply realize that unless someone smashed it with a metal hammer while it was plugged in, that the phone shouldn't catch on fire.
And even then, it shouldn't catch on fire. A well designed product just shouldn't even be able to catch on fire. It should be designed with the user's safety being its first design consideration.
5,700 iPhones destined for recycling (due to failed quality tests) are stolen from the factory and sold to retailers, iPhone users reporting locked iPhones upon initial set up, and now iPhone in China spontaneously combusting.
I wonder if it is all connected...
I wonder if it is all connected...
Geesh I wonder why no one has ever thought of this before -- batteries that are safer and last longer!
/s
That site let anyone claim their phone had bent. Countless false claims. Apple released the actual number of phones reported to them at the time and it was just 9. Claim there's an issue all you want but if you don't report it to the manufacturer how do you ever expect to have the issue resolved.
Samsung on the other hand said they had 35 reports of incidents at the time of their first recall. That number grew and the second happened.
There were also far fewer Note 7s out there than iPhones 6 which means a greater percentage of users were impacted.
The key too is that while the Apple issue resulted in only a mild inconvenience, the Samsung issue could have well resulted in injury, property loss, or even death. It burned at least one vehicle to the ground, started a fire that grounded a plane, and burned a hotel room, in addition to other reports. The severity isn't comparable and there was never a recall issued with the iPhone 6.
Almost as old as "Apple is doomed" but good luck getting people to let that one go.
[doublepost=1481078995][/doublepost]This could also be an intimidation tactic from the Chinese toward Apple. Business news had stories of similar tactics against WalMart store located in China. Also MickeyD's. I remember recent stories with headlines stating that China will retaliate against Apple if President-elect Trump hassles their export-to-the-USA enterprises. This could be the first round.
As Apple's iPhone 6s is facing scrutiny in China over a battery issue that causes unexpected shutdowns, a Chinese consumer group has complained of a separate problem with the iPhone 6 - spontaneous battery fires.
According to the The Wall Street Journal, the Shanghai Consumer Council says it received eight reports from Chinese users claiming their smartphones spontaneously caught on fire, but Apple inspected the devices and says "external physical damage" is to blame.
Given that the iPhone 6 has been available since 2014 and there have been a limited number of report about device fires, Apple's physical damage explanation rings true. With the Samsung Galaxy Note 7, which had a true faulty part leading to fires, reports from around the world started flooding in just weeks after the device was released.
Complaints from Chinese consumer groups over iPhone 6s battery problems led Apple to introduce a repair program for iPhone 6s devices that unexpectedly shut down, and Apple has gone out of its way in China to explain the issue and assure customers that it is not safety related.
Apple's repair program will see it providing new batteries to customers with iPhone 6s devices primarily manufactured between September and October of 2015. Just today, Apple expanded the repair program to encompass a small number of customers "outside of the affected range" who are also experiencing shutdowns.
On its Chinese site, Apple explained that the iPhone 6s shutdown issue was caused by exposure to "controlled ambient air" during the manufacturing process, which caused the battery to degrade faster than a normal battery.
Next week, Apple plans to introduce a diagnostic tool that will allow it to gather information and better manage battery performance levels to prevent shutdowns. With iOS 10.2 nearly ready to launch, it's likely the diagnostic capability will be included in that update.
As Apple's third largest market after the United States and Europe, China has become increasingly important to Apple over the last several years. Apple has made an effort to introduce a number of retail stores in the country, and it has made a $1 billion investment in Chinese ride-sharing company Didi Chuxing.
Despite its efforts, Apple has struggled in China. In Apple's third quarter earnings report, revenue in China was down 33 percent year over year, dropping from $13 billion in 3Q 2015 to $8.9 billion in 3Q 2016.
Chinese officials have said Apple is "too deeply established in the country's core industries," and along with recent trouble over its iPhones, Apple has also struggled with its iTunes Movie and iBooks Store in China, which were shut down by Chinese administrators in April.
Article Link: Chinese Consumer Group Complains of Spontaneous iPhone 6 Fires, but Apple Blames 'Physical Damage'
You made it sound like all phones have non-removable batteries. Buy an LG, they still allow removable batteries on their phones.
My opinion on batteries: Removable batteries create more risk as users have more flexibility to use unauthorized batteries. Then it would be even more difficult to diagnose any problems.
no matter how many issues have been reported, no matter what the cause, I hope that these claims are taken seriously and investigated thoroughly - all it takes is some rich Chinese to push a class action against Apple and it could really ruin the company's reputation.
So 8 potential deaths and that's assuming they weren't driving with a car full of children at the time is considered acceptable in your sick world!!!
What the hell is wrong with you man!!!
Any phone with a lithium ion battery could catch fire. Look up phones from HTC, Motorola, LG, etc and you'll find stories about them catching fire.
I'm just saying 8 out of half a billion is relatively low compared to the industry
Guess you don't cross the road either? Or drive a car or sit in one as a passenger? Use fossil fuels to heat your home or cook?
Li-ion batteries are combustable, anyone that's done high school chemistry would know that. You can also get knocked over while crossing the road. Cars catch fire. Homes burn down due to Gas/Oil/cooking related fires. etc, etc, etc....
So yes, there is an acceptable level of risk and the trade off is the benefit we derive in exchange for taking that risk. Eight reported episodes of a battery catching fire, set against millions of units shipped IMO doesn't shift that risk/reward ratio significantly.
Labelling someone else sick on the basis of an irrational exaggerated analysis makes you look like a hypocrite, because you managed to post on this forum and the device you used either has a battery or is plugged into the mains (and guess what, more then 8 people have died as a result of electrocution or electrical fires).
That's nothing to do with the context of my post, he's basically saying 8 potential deaths is ok, because Samsung had 40 potential deaths!! If a yank kid shoots 8 kids in high skool, is it OK cos a south Korean kid shot 40 kids in his skool. That's exactly the point. None of it is OK, none of it is an opportunity to point score against another company. Unless of course you view the world in a manner I would not describe as normal!!!
[doublepost=1481107752][/doublepost]
No you are not, you are using it as some cheap point scoring method against Samsung, which when you consider people's lives could have been at risk is lame to say the least. Very very unsavoury behaviour... how many explosions does there have to be, and how many folk need to die before you consider it serious?
johnnyturbouk
macrumors 68000
Apple also seems to have taken a real beating by the courts in China lately, it's as though the PRC hs decided to cut the hand that feeds it, apple ,like many other tech companies, help fuel the juggernaut that is Chinese manufacturing.
All technology fails; ALL! Every engineering attempt is "dead-man engineering"
Every car design will have at least one crash, every Airplane design will have at least on crash, every motorcycle design will kill at least one rider....
The trick is to get failures and dangers down to an acceptable level. It's somewhat crass; but if we required all products to be absolutely 100% safe and failure proof; we would still be cavemen; as literally nothing ever built by humans meets that criteria.
All Li-ion batteries have a non-zero rate of overheating... as all batteries manufactured have a non-zero rate of defects, this rate may be very very small, but still non-zero. This rate is compounded by poor chargers that supply incorrect voltages (some are so poor that they may even supply line voltage if the charger is damaged) and physical damage which can lead to shorts in the battery.
China's protecting its own factories and jobs by publicly dissing the idea of its citizens buying foreign.
In short, they're simply doing what Trump is going to try to do in the US.
Firstly, poor analogy. Someone shooting someone else is a deliberate action with intent to harm/kill and other then self defence there is no acceptable argument of mitigation. Moreover, its erroneous to draw parallels between a phone and a hand gun and as such its an inappropriate analogy laced with emotion rather then genuinely aimed at a reasonable comparison.
Even if a handgun went off accidentally and killed someone, many people would question why the bearer of the firearm was carrying one in the first place. No one is reasonably going to question why someone was carrying a phone or a manufacturer chose to use a Li-ion battery in a consumer device.
WRT point scoring, it strikes me that it is you that views the world in a manner that is not normal. You seem to have taken umbrage because someone has perfectly reasonably drawn a distinction between two similar types of failure. And your subsequent post reveals that it is because you can't stand that someone may possibly have attempted to point score against a brand you appear to want to protect from criticism like it is your child.
If you really believed as per your original post that its sick 8 people could possibly have come in harms way, it should follow you would pour even more scorn on a product that has had a greater level of failure and was forced to pull the product. Instead you focussed on the lesser failure.
It's perfectly reasonable to draw the distinction between a small number of reported failures in proportion to the huge number of devices shipped, against the larger number of failures in proportion to a much smaller number of devices shipped and in a smaller time frame.
What you seem to be unable to grasp is that some Li-ion batteries can fail and catch fire and the more you ship the more likely it is someone will experience such a failure. Its an inherent risk albeit a very small one. Samsung appeared to have gone significantly past that point of acceptability and were forced to recall and cancel the product.
I don't think that reflects badly on Samsung. I think that reflects well on them that they acted promptly and despite the fact it caused significant damage to their business. Many unscrupulous businesses may well have stuck their head in the sand and left their customers at risk for much longer. Moreover, they have a track record of shipping lots of products without any such safety concerns and so one should understand sometimes these things happen and the more important thing is how the manufacturer responds. But at this point the two incidents are not comparable, wether you take it as point scoring or not.
johnnyturbouk
macrumors 68000
Good point, however, forgive my ignorance, but is the precedence that the PRC are adopting untenable? If apple and others & co. move their tech manufacturing out of China, resulting in loss of tech jobs. Would this not ultimately prove detrimental to the Chinese economy, or do they feel they can that they can supplant Apple's foothold in the markets in China. Whilst cheap tech may be a dime a dozen in China, but will shoppers be willing to fork out the same $$ for the cheap alternative, I for one would not pay £900 for a Huawei smart phone.