My experience with an iPhone 4S fire/short circuit

[M Quick]

@OP: I was not calling you a liar, but you must admit it does seem odd that battery acid on the iPhone side did not also corrode the connector on the cable side. Like I said before, your phone might have been exposed to moisture without your knowledge. I suppose another alternative is that during the manufacturing process the connector on the phone was exposed to flux that was not removed.

In any case, I think we'd all agree that the important thing is that you weren't injured and the phone was replaced.

EDIT: My expertise: PhD in neuroscience, in which I deal with a lot of electronic components in neurophysiological implants that are potentially exposed to salty (and therefore corrosive) body fluids...

If you look at the pictures you'll see it has corrosion on the cable side as well? I do see it..

 

[VulchR]

Looks like burn marks rather than corrosion to me (namely, dark soot rather than blueish-green verdigris). In any case, my point is not to accuse the OP of anything, but to point there are other plausible (perhaps more plausible) explanations than a manufacturing defect.

 

[Artimus12]

Not everybody is so anal as to clean the ports on their phone with a toothbrush though. ..

and not everybody works in an anally 'clean' environment.

 

[Photogdave]

You are such a fool if you think that only water can cause corrosion. Battery acid corrodes metal much faster than water ever can. The picture you posted is irrelevant, you don't even say what it is or how long it was exposed to the corroding substance. I had my iPhone 4S for just over two months, and I charge it every other day or more often. Do you really think that it could have been wet for all that time and suddenly catch on fire yesterday?

That was caused by corrosion on the connector. I said the same thing when I viewed the images. The green is a dead give away.
Another thing, it wasn't battery leakage. The iPhone uses a Lithium battery and they don't have acid.

Also, the cable end connector looks as though some pins are out of place too.

No one is really suggesting it fell in the toilet. But it got large moisture somewhere. That could be next to a cold cup etc.

Heres my thinking. It doesnt have a case......which tells me its in your pocket a good bit......also from seeing the lent on the mic and speaker screen.
In your pocket, its getting moisture from sweaty legs and balls.
Sweat is one of the most corrosive things out there.

It most likely didn't short circuit initially. The corrosion cause a bad connection, which leads to over heating in the connector due to resistance, which leads to connector separators melting which then leads to a short circuit across pins and then all hell broke loose

Keep the new one out of your pocket and use less when hands are sweaty.
It is what it is. Glad they replaced it though.

 

[Mars478]

OP: Might want to also blur out your IMEI number from the screenshots... some bad guy could use that to his advantage.....

 

[charlituna]

I also know that the Apple Store employee classified the problem as a fire and battery leak, even though there were no open flames.

Just because he classified it as that doesn't mean that's what it was. They are trained to go with what the customer says unless they can 100% prove otherwise. Like someone claims the phone never got wet but they open it up and there's a puddle inside. If you look at their notes they will even say "Customer states . . ."

They weren't there so they can't prove you are telling the truth and they can't explain the damage as something else so they replaced it based on your word. Nothing more or less. And I sure hope that whatever store you went to doesn't find out who helped you because that fire comment is almost certainly in their eyes 'confidential information' that you shouldn't have been told and someone would get fired if caught

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That said, I'm sure the Genius at the Apple Store was eager to make the swap for you without hassle because the company in general is skittish about their products catching fire.

Lets be fair. that's any company, not just Apple.

And that 'skittish' part is why they would fire an employee on the spot for the comment about how many incidents they see. They wouldn't want is a handful of incidents out of millions of units to become a witch hunt of negative PR and folks demanding replacements there's not need to replace

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below you will find the incident record I received from the Apple Store describing the damage and showing I got a free replacement.

No where on that record does it say that the employee confirmed that the phone caught fire. Just what you state

On and next time you are worried about your private info remember that the repair number and employee number can be used to find who helped you. THe same someone that you claim told you information about rate of incidence for such issues and probably shouldn't have. Here's hoping no one from Apple is lurking around the boards or someone's Christmas will be getting fired.

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Not everybody is so anal as to clean the ports on their phone with a toothbrush though.

I hope those that are remember to use an ESD safe brush or they could create static that will short out the connector.

 

[scotdchernoff1]

Last night I plugged my 16gb black iPhone 4S into the charger and went to sleep. I woke up an hour or two later to my phone vibrating a lot and lighting up, like it was being unplugged and plugged back into the charger multiple times per second. I picked it up and was almost burned by how hot the phone was. As I gained my senses after waking up, I could also smell electrical smoke. I quickly unplugged the charger from the surge protector, and looked at the phone. I turned on the lights and saw that there had been short circuit and almost a fire at the connection point between the charger cable and the phone.
Some background about my phone: It is just over two months old (per-ordered and received on Oct 14), it has never been dropped, and it has never been wet.
I've heard or batteries overheating and catching on fire, but rarely a connector fire. I took my phone into the Apple Store today, and got it replaced for free in about 10 minutes. The Genius Bar employee who helped me told me that Apple Stores see about one fire replacement per month, I did the math, and with about 358 Apple Stores (as of November, 2011), this means that over 4000 iPhones are catching on fire every year. This seems like a very high number, even with the millions out there. If over 4000 of a certain car model spontaneously erupted in flames every year, there would be massive recalls. Why not with the iPhone?
Here are some pictures of my phone and the charger cable.
Any thoughts?

when you get this please call me as I am a battery expert and do hope you still have this iPhone 404 6329849. we are in the process of suing apple for a design defect since it is the battery charging system which is flawed.

scot d chernoff

 

[Tibno]

You Serious?

Lack of care from the consumer? My phone has NEVER been wet, and the Apple Store confirmed a FIRE! The corrosion you see is due to the battery acid leaking and corroding the metal itself.

I'm sorry, but I have worked with Li-ion batteries (Used in iDevices) for a very long time and believe me, if your Li-ion battery begins to leak, it's not corrosion you should be worrying about. When lithium reacts with oxygen, you get a thermal run-off effect where your battery will begin consuming the oxygen around it, until either the source of oxygen, or lithium has been depleted.

This process generally results in explosive flames up to around 1300 degrees C, and a lot of smoke.

The battery has nothing to do with your corrosion issue, you simply need to pay more attention to where you use your phone as it looks like you have left it in the bathroom whilst you had a shower, I've done the same and had the same issue with corrosion (Steam gets into the port, along with your speakers).

Half a q-tip and a tiny spray of WD-40 works like a charm to get rid of the corrosion.

No matter how well it's been taken care of, moisture has entered your charging port at some stage during the life of the iPhone.

I use an Otterbox case now so I never really have moisture issues these days.

Kaya