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Thai Man Reportedly Electrocuted After Using a Charging iPhone 4S
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Nonsense. All cables that I use at work have "paper label thingies" on the side - with my name on them, because these cables tend to disappear and not to return to my desk otherwise.
Fake chargers would very quickly be changed to look like Apple chargers. Which means they cram a little bit more electronics into very little space, which makes the risk of something going wrong even higher.
Fact is: It is easy to make a charger that is safe and cheap. It is just very hard to make one that is safe, cheap, and as small as an Apple charger. If you don't mind having a big charger, it would be easy to make a cheap and safe one. The problem is keeping a safe distance between high voltage and low voltage parts, and by just making the charger bigger that's a lot lot easier to do.
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Keep in mind that the risk is actually very low. With millions of fake chargers out there, your chance of getting killed is probably less than one in ten million. I see people driving their cars doing things that have a much higher chance of getting them killed every day. Actually, if Apple offered you a free replacement charger and you drove 10 miles to pick one up, the chances of getting killed driving there are probably higher than being killed by the charger.
I have a handful of adapters bought in thailand, china and indonesia I have picked up while travelling for literally pennies ... the last adapter i bought in MBK in bangkok and was about 10bht (about £0.22/$0.35), a big difference to the prices apple want.
The reality in the likes of thailand are that many realistically cannot afford to go to an apple store and buy a legit charger and/or cable, and I anticipate the "well how can they afford to buy such a handset" comments, and the realistic answer to this is that (from my experience) a lot of nationals who have apple handsets, have not bought them but come about them via other means (like finding lost handsets brought into the country from tourists, trading for other items, thefts) ... this is information gained 1st hand from nationals and expats who do have apple handsets but acquired via various ways
Yes it is sad a person has died from this incident, but it may not have been the adapter or lead at fault, and more likely to be a power surge or faulty power socket, which is very common esp in the bigger metropolis' in the country.
The reality in the likes of thailand are that many realistically cannot afford to go to an apple store and buy a legit charger and/or cable, and I anticipate the "well how can they afford to buy such a handset" comments, and the realistic answer to this is that (from my experience) a lot of nationals who have apple handsets, have not bought them but come about them via other means (like finding lost handsets brought into the country from tourists, trading for other items, thefts) ... this is information gained 1st hand from nationals and expats who do have apple handsets but acquired via various ways
Yes it is sad a person has died from this incident, but it may not have been the adapter or lead at fault, and more likely to be a power surge or faulty power socket, which is very common esp in the bigger metropolis' in the country.
Not everyone reads Macrumors and not everyone speaks English. Why is this so damn hard to understand? A guy working in some shop somewhere in Thailand isn't going onto engadget and reading tech news.
And to people saying, why not just get an Apple charger. Not everyone knows what is an official charger and what isn't. Not everyone has access to a retailer selling official chargers. And not everyone can afford 20 euros for a charger. In fact, for the majority people living in this world, this is a lot of money. And no, not everyone who owns an iPhone can spend that much money on a charger. You could buy a used iPhone for dirt cheap. It could even be stolen, who knows.
To Apple, the solution for this problem is quite obvious: Make your charger more cheaper. If it is 20, make it 10.
This has NOTHING to do with Apple or their products. Electricity and metal don't go together. If you buy cheap, fake, unauthorized, unlicensed, etc......... electricity components then this is what you get. If this happened with a non-Apple product it wouldn't even make the news. Go figure!
What action do you want them to take? It's not their product that's killing people. My business doesn't give away its product for free just because our non-customers may be harmed by shoddy work from rivals, and I suspect neither does yours.
It's a point, not saying the deaths are BS but:
1) They only happen in developing countries.
2) They always involve 3rd party chargers (which I've never personally had an issue with... in the picture you can see that the guy's cable was frayed and he fixed it using a metal twist tie thingy... stupid!)
3) it's never an Android/Win 7/Ubuntu/old POS phone although they are a LOT more common.
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Throwing it out there... fake chargers break more easily but why would they electrocute you? My guess is that the electrocutions all involve one of the following:
1) Water.
2) A frayed cable that has been fixed using an unconventional method and is beyond gone.
3) Possibly fake/tampered with 'iPhones'. Visit China/Vietnam... you'll find that iPhones are jailbroken with a zillion stolen apps on them BEFORE you even buy them. Dig deeper and the body has been tampered with (different colours...etc) probably all fitted by some desperate b@$t@rd with no idea. Snip snip here... ooooh iPhone glows now!!!
4) Falsification/political (anti-American) motives/anti-Apple sentiment/tightly controlled, state-owned media that you usually wouldn't trust on any other issue such as human rights, politics, non-Apple current affairs...etc.
Not saying go buy non-Apple cables, but most likely they won't kill you IMO. Issues come when the cables fray and you not only continue to use them (with metal wires sticking out, directly connected to the wall) but also try stuffing the metal wires in place using a bit of twisty metal (as shown in the picture).
Not being a smarta$$ about this, but news does not come in english only and Thailand is certainly not in some remote part of the world where they could possibly not have access to news either. If he had electricity to charge that phone, then he was not in a remote area.
Your argument of people who own iphones not being able to afford to own the proper charger does not fly with me either. If they can own the phone and pay for the phone plan, then they have online access to buy the proper charger and the money to most likely pay for it. If not then they should not have the phone in the first place.
This falls back to the manufacturers of the faulty non approved chargers. Why is no one upset with them.
Even if Apple can blame these occurances on third party adapters, if Apple doesn't start implementing a circuit breaker or surge protector in the iPhone itself to protect the iPhone from transmitting the surge, then I am going to start blaming Apple for continuing the problem.
It may not be Apple's problem now, but it will be if it doesn't do anything more than an adapter takeback program. It needs to work on the safety of its devices such that its devices won't act as such an easy power transfer conduit to one's face.
EDIT: this would obviously only apply to new products. I'd hope they have built it into iPhone 5S, but if not, the next iPhone really needs to have this kind of circuitry.
It may not be Apple's problem now, but it will be if it doesn't do anything more than an adapter takeback program. It needs to work on the safety of its devices such that its devices won't act as such an easy power transfer conduit to one's face.
EDIT: this would obviously only apply to new products. I'd hope they have built it into iPhone 5S, but if not, the next iPhone really needs to have this kind of circuitry.
It's unlikely that someone in Thailand who buys a used or stolen iPhone along with a cheap non-Apple charger is going to know or be told that he's putting himself in danger. So, while deaths like this are tragic, there's not much that Apple can reasonably do. No matter what Apple does short of giving away free chargers (apart from the ones that ship with the iPhone), there's no way they're going to compete with third parties who sell them for a buck or less.
Thailand is on a 220V system as opposed to the US 120V standard. I'm guessing this would make line voltage more dangerous.
"Buy our overpriced chargers or risk death, the choice is yours."
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It would appear that that is the choice. You do get a FREE charger with the device and you don't get much cheaper than that. Basically the choice is use the safe free charger and live. You a crappy charger and risk your life. It doesn't seem to be an unreasonable choice.
Well, I think they already do... With their own chargers! I have an iPod 5th gen (click wheel) with a genuine charger which is still working nicely - albeit I practically need to keep the iPod connected all the time if I want to use it, but that's an other story - but this 30 pins charger refuse to charge my iPhone 4S. It says something like "this accessory can't be used with this iPhone". So they must do a some sort of detection already... I think...
I guess those knock-off must be able to "by-pass" that detection (or more likely, emulate the real thing).
Yes but there is such a proliferation of fakes in China and elsewhere in Asia that it's often impossible to find the real thing, and many wouldn't know it even if they could.
What there is are plenty of fake lookalike "Apple" stores that sell dodgy items.
It's been 10 years since this happened, but I actually got shocks through my arm from a legitimate cable cord. I was unplugging it and the current went through my arm and I couldn't feel it for like a minute.
It always could be bad wiring too. Because using that same outlet, I also plugged in something that turned the entire power off in our house.
It always could be bad wiring too. Because using that same outlet, I also plugged in something that turned the entire power off in our house.
LOL. Here it is in PHP, just one simple decision...
<?php
if ( !$apple_charger )
die ; // literally
?>
i have lived in Thailand and i was amazed to see how dangerous power sockets or switches could be there
that's why i'm not surprised to see someone electrocuted with an electronic device
it is absolutely not the fault of the iphone
that's why i'm not surprised to see someone electrocuted with an electronic device
it is absolutely not the fault of the iphone
Be fair, this isn't exactly being reported all over the place. You'll only know if you follow tech news or MacRumors. The average joe wont have a clue.
Really Apple need to be sending out an email to all AppleID accounts regardless of if they are subscribed or not.
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The US ones aren't much better. I really don't get how people can be ok with plugs that have such poor connections.
I know our UK plug is a bit of a brick, but it's extremely safe compared to pretty much every other country.
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