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Likely caused by bad batteries and/or a defective battery control board, unable to regulate charging properly, causing overheating and fire. What's more important is maintaining ventilation for devices charging. Even power adapter and charging brick could burn and catch fire if left unchecked. Same for power banks. I touched my laptop power adapter before, and sometimes it was too hot to touch. Fortunately no burning and fire, but that was way too scary.
 
Cars catch on fire all the time. Would you stop driving one for the fear of a malfunction?

Why do people post these clickbait articles and sensationalize? This is literally a one in a few million thing. He claims his iPhone was stuck to his leg which means it was under the sheets and possibly under his leg while wrapped in a thick case with zero ventilation. I’d toss out his lawsuit in his face.

Most people charge their phones overnight. As long as you don’t completely cover up your phone while fast charging, there’s zero chance of this happening excluding bad luck.
 
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I saw a news article saying not to charge the iPhone while sleeping or while unattended:
Yup, and make sure you unplug all your electronics, dishwasher, TV, washer, dryer, everything, and then flip the main circuit to the house off. And while at it, also turn the water to the house off, you know, leaks can happen at night too :p
 
I saw a news article saying not to charge the iPhone while sleeping or while unattended:
This is common sense. Never charge your iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch even if it’s using MagSafe or wired, under the sheets of your bed or next to your body. Use a charging dock or charge it on the nightstand.
 
I charged my iPhone 11 almost every night plugged in to a 5W charger, for 6 years.

I'm currently charging my iPhone 17 almost every night wirelessly.

I like to live dangerously.
You and I both…living on the edge! :cool: Thug life.
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Why do people post these clickbait articles and sensationalize?

People flock to articles like this because it's comfort food that helps them believe all of their over-thinking that batteries are these barely-contained voodoo magic chemical sacks that must be vigilantly tended to with precise charging and handling gymnastics. Never mind that it's almost entirely nonsense.
 
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Well, while most people have not been in such situations (myself included), this is more than a likely scenario.

Older lightning-equipped iPhones were known to work properly only with MFI accessories. When regular person sees that after paying $$$$ for the phone itself they would need to shell some $$$ more on decent charger and/or cable after their breaks, obviously they would go for cheapest.

These cheap cables and charging bricks are often a reason for things like that. And Apple is fully aware because they have done zero precautions. It could have been a bad battery as well, so maybe the extent of this is much bigger.

This is why:

- batteries must be fully user-removable AND replaceable. So in case of bloat, battery would just lift a cover and not puncture itself from excessive heat and expansion;

- Apple must provide option for Bypass charging to decrease battery strain when using device during charging, so whenever person uses phone wired, charging would stop, PERIOD. OnePlus for example already provides that feature in their phones. It increases battery safety and health by A LOT. Imagine if this would have been on all MacBooks and iPads too?

- Apple must include option to force slow charging to prevent battery aging. Right in settings, so battery controller would not pass more than 5-10W during charging. Reduces heat, makes battery live longer.


But I guess considering there are still no such options, Apple is not really interested in users keeping using their older phones.

As for overnight charging it was likely NOT a cause of explosion since iPhone doesn’t care when to draw charge. It is all about battery, controller, wiring and brick. Anyway Apple should be found guilty, they should not get away with their utterly bad and low quality batteries that are worse than from budget Android phones
 
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Urgh this thread kills me. "yeah it's fine". No it's not. You just haven't had something explode on you yet.

Firstly there's a hell of a lot of energy in these batteries which loves to come out very quickly. Why do you think your phone lasts as long as it does?

Even with the quality control Apple have there are going to be a small number of batteries with manufacturing flaws in them and slightly less than optimal ageing characteristics. As for failure modes, typically you end up with internal shorts between layers of the foil from manufacturing defects or electrode wear. These generate heat and gas and you end up with thermal runaway which is the point at which the pack goes woosh and goes up in flames or explodes. The reason this tends to happen on charge is because charging generates a lot of heat which causes slight expansion and contraction of the layers.

It does happen and like hell you should be charging a battery when you are asleep. Even with a factory fresh phone, cable, charger, proper charge controller and all that, there is a probabilistic failure mode to consider in your pocket incendiary. If it wasn't a thing, then we wouldn't have entire web sites and subreddits dedicated to "spicy pillows" which is the least violent failure mode.

Anyway it might not happen but it might happen. Which is why you have smoke alarms, seat belts and look left and right before we cross the road.

Edit: oh and this is nothing much to do with charge controllers, the charger itself or any of that but battery chemistry and engineering. The charger has a shelf life on the parts as well, particularly electrolytic capacitors. The cable has mechanical failure modes which lead to shorts and heating too. Those are different problems though.
 
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Yup, and make sure you unplug all your electronics, dishwasher, TV, washer, dryer, everything, and then flip the main circuit to the house off. And while at it, also turn the water to the house off, you know, leaks can happen at night too :p

My mother burned half her kitchen down because a RIFA X2 class capacitor, which is permanently connected across the mains before the isolation switch caught fire in a mixer. This is a known failure mode much reported and understood due to the epoxy encapsulation failing, moisture getting in and then the capacitor dissipating power and thus generating heat and eventually fire.

And we have the whole Grenfell tower fire here which took the lives of 72 people which started as an appliance fire and spread through cladding into the rest of the building. Don't assume a minor thing can't turn into a major thing.

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Sleep well.

Source: actual qualified electrical engineer...
 
This has always been a "risk" for as long as rechargeable batteries have existed, and probably always will be.
That being said, unless you are using a sketchy 3rd party charger, the risk is quite small. These products are engineered in such a way as to prevent dangerous over-charging. Millions of people charge their devices over night every single day and incidents like this are exceptionally rare, otherwise it wouldn't be news.

Can I say that there's a 0% chance of it happening to you? Of course not. And if you're worried, just don't charge your phone over night. Is it likely to happen to you if you're using proper Apple approved accessories? No.
 
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