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iPhone 4 Experiences 'Self Combustion' Aboard Just-Landed Aircraft

jamesryanbell said:
Probably a defective phone.
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Izzat an iPhone in your pocket or do you have the hot's for me?
 
theosib said:
More reasons for aviation authorities to tell us not to use cell phones on planes.

But seriously… people like to complain about not being allowed to use cell phones on planes. If one person were using a cell phone, there's absolutely no effect it would have on the plane. On the other hand, I might see it as plausble that there might be some small amount of interference if EVERYONE were using their cell phones on the plane at once.

This one time, my wife was reading her Nook on a plane, when some guy said to her that she was going to crash the plane with that thing on. I told him he should learn how these things work before opening his mouth. He just looked away. I'm guessing he didn't expect anyone to stand up to him.

Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that something like an iPod Touch might cause trouble if it were transmitting, searching for a wifi signal (although I expect it's completely passive while scanning). A Nook or Kindle, the ePaper models, are basically as OFF as they can be while you're reading a static page. The eInk requires no power at all to maintain an image. And then when you hit the next-page button, for a brief instant, it's using a tiny amount of power to refresh the display. Wifi (this one is not 3G capable) isn't even switched on unless you ask it to do something that requires it.
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Have you not seen the myth busters programme about phone interference on aeroplanes? They got a device which simulated phone emissions and cranked it up about a million times. It did nothing. Phones are banned on 'planes so aviation companies can rip people of with their own telephones. End of story.
 
ccnp11 said:
You're aware how ludicrous this sounds, yes? Please tell me how pressure changes of the sort seen on a commercial flight could cause this....
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We are talking a smaller regional airline here. They fly mostly 3 & 4 seat wide turboprop planes so they are flying a lot lower than what you might expect of a Commercial Jet, and a mixture of pressurized and unpressurized craft. We've had some pretty wild storm roll through the area in the last week or so it could be the phone was subjected to pressures close to it's design range. Maybe the person was doing several hops, so the phone may have been subject to a number of pressure changes over a short period. Add boarding from open tarmac while it was possibly raining.

iPhones are really popular on those flights, it's an airline that moves a lot of cashed up miners and associated workers so the chance are there were a number of other iPhones on the flight that didn't have issues. So it really does seem like some rare combination of unusual factors, not a common issue.
 
If you are brown skinned, have fun explaining what happened to fellow passengers.
You will probably be beaten to death! Lol.
 
betaboy78 said:
Is it just me, or does the logo on the back of the iPhone look like the Steve Jobs Silhouette version of the Apple Logo?
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It's possible it's a 3rd party backplate (I've seen it around in some of the knockoff shops) and whoever did it reassembled a wire short somewhere.
 
baaadboy said:
If you are brown skinned, have fun explaining what happened to fellow passengers.
You will probably be beaten to death! Lol.
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EDIT: I am kind of scared to bring my iPhone on board now. Just don't wanna get killed in the confusion.
 
Good news to see this morning. I'm about to board a flight with that same airline today lets hope my iP4 doesn't go smokey either.
 
Small White Car said:
And THIS is why the flight attendants tell you to turn your phone off during the flight!

He must have turned it on a minute before the plane landed, when we all know it magically becomes ok to use cell phones again.
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Um, please tell me you are being sarcastic?

For those of you who insist that they say turn off your phones because of "incidents like this", I won't even say don't talk out of ignorance. You don't need ignorance not to realize why this is stupid. It's called common sense.

Common sense would tell you if they were worried your phone would blow up if you turned it on:
1. They wouldn't tell you it's safe to turn on your phones while you are still in the plane (when you land you get to hear, you can turn on your cellphones now).
2. Ipads, ebook readers, ipods/mp3 players, and laptops would also be told not to use *during* flight (because they do tell you at some point it's safe to turn them on). THey also have batteries you have to worry about. Being a cellphone doesn't magically make it more likely than any of those items, many of which have bigger batteries even, of blowing up.
3. Your iphone wouldn't be calling it "airplane mode" to remind you to put it on that when you are on a flight ;). Because if you are supposed to turn it off, there would be no point.

Now, even without just using common sense, they tell you to turn off the cellphone and stuff like that is because they worry about interference. And I'll tell you from living with a guy who has his pilot's license and flying with him (half the time neither one of us remembering to turn off the phone), it is one instrument the cellphone part of your phone interferes with (and I'm not sure it's even guarenteed to do that) and it's not a huge deal (unless the pilot doesn't know the instrument is being interfered with which very will would happen in a large plane). Oh, and it causes your headsets to get very staticky (ever have your cellphone go off near your computer? It can cause a very similar affect).

Hell, they aer working on technology that lets you use your cellphone in flight (or have already worked on some technology. I read an article a few years back on it). They already have technology to get your wi-fi in flight.

Now, the reason they tell you to turn off electrical items when landing and taking off is that is the times most likely something will happen to cause the plane to crash. And they want your full attention in case that happens (or at least for you to be able to hear). They don't want to get sued cause you were listening to music and not paying attention and ended up getting hurt or dieing.
 
I'm betting this becomes a more heard of issue as people throw their iPhones from buildings to claim its exploded so they can get a new one.
 
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