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We don't know it was the charger.

If the victim really was literally electrocuted then, yes we do.

Ye canna change the laws 'o physics cap'n. You need a lot of voltage to push enough current through electrical resistance of the human body to cause damage (at least from outside).

The output from the charger should be 5V. That tingles if you lick it.

If a voltage high enough to electrocute anybody was present, then the charger must have been faulty, probably an internal short connecting the ground wire of the output (and hence the phone body) to the mains. A well designed charger should make it very, very hard for that to happen.

OK - there's a lot of energy in the battery, so if that gets shorted by something with low resistance (e.g. metal, not people) it can go foom and cause burns - but not electrocution.
 
If the victim really was literally electrocuted then, yes we do.

Ye canna change the laws 'o physics cap'n. You need a lot of voltage to push enough current through electrical resistance of the human body to cause damage (at least from outside).

The output from the charger should be 5V. That tingles if you lick it.

If a voltage high enough to electrocute anybody was present, then the charger must have been faulty, probably an internal short connecting the ground wire of the output (and hence the phone body) to the mains. A well designed charger should make it very, very hard for that to happen.

OK - there's a lot of energy in the battery, so if that gets shorted by something with low resistance (e.g. metal, not people) it can go foom and cause burns - but not electrocution.
It's the amps that kill you
 
Apple could design in a "crow bar" safety device. All they would have to do is place a Zener diode across the power input pins so that if the incoming voltage is about some threshold (say, maybe 15 volts) the zener conducts and draws a LOT of current and blows a micro-sized fuse that is directly connected to the power input pin. This would work if the cable had a working ground.

The issue is the charger is still supplying 5 volts between its +ve and -ve pins, so as far as the phone is concerned all is fine and dandy. If one of those pins somehow becomes attached to either the mains live or neutral inside the charger, the whole phone is at the potential of the mains power line. BUT, the phone will still function and charge normally since the voltage between the +ve and -ve pins is still 5v; whilst the voltage between the phone's case and ground could be 240v.

A crowbar circuit works by shorting a circuit completely (i.e. shutting it down to ~zero volts) when the voltage is too high, whereas a zener limits the voltage to the zener voltage of the diode, but the circuit doesn't shut down.

If a crowbar circuit was used in an iPhone, even fusing/crowbaring all the lines from the charger wouldn't prevent electrocution. This is because the whole phone becomes the same voltage as the mains, and there's no reference to ground. The reference that's supposed to ground (the case of the phone, the shielding in the USB cable and the USB socket in the charger) is no longer a zero volt reference due to the faulty charger. That is until some unfortunate/cheap individual provides that reference, blowing themselves up in the process. Even when someone's been electrocuted by the phone, it usually still works as the voltages inside the phone haven't exceeded the 5v limit. The phone never "sees" the mains voltage, so it can't guard against it.

In other words, it's impossible to determine the voltage of the phone's case vs ground from inside the phone, and as such, a crowbar circuit wouldn't work.

When I hear stuff like this I wonder if it's me mollycoddling my cables or if others are being careless with their equipment.
I started with the 3G, went to the 3GS and 4 and now have a 5S - all cables fine. In all that time my partners cable for her iP4 just started to fray after two years.

I take good care of my iPhone cables, but they're junk. The non-PVC "eco friendly" plastic in the cables Apple now use is actually foam, if you look at it under a magnifying glass or microscope you can see the miniature bubbles. It's very weak and poor quality. The lack of decent strain relief doesn't help either. I guess Greenpeace think it's better to drive 20 miles to the Apple store a few times a year and have 3 new eco-friendly cables than have one PVC one that lasts for years. I've got several of the older PVC ones with squeeze-to-release dock connector and they look like the day they were made.

Look around. Every house should have 5V DC power lines to begin with. Instead of a USB charger on every firkin' wall outlet, just put a beefier version in the switchboards. What is this, 1995?

Nope, that won't work due to losses in the power lines. 50 feet of cable between the switchboard and a few iPhones plugged in results in a 30% power drop, leaving just 3.5v.

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.

When Apple can defy physics, they really will be magical. The iPhone doesn't transmit the surge, the charger does. You put cheap brake pads on your car and then crash into a wall, do you blame the car manufacturer who should have added some kind of extra protection incase you do install cheap pads?

It's the amps that kill you

Yes, but since the voltage in the iPhone battery is so low, there's way too much resistance in your skin to cause a short. Plus touching one terminal of a battery and the Earth at the same time doesn't provide a full circuit, unlike touching the live on a mains socket and the Earth.
 
Funny how none of these "claims" come from the U.S., where a majority of the devices are located and used.

Not only that, why do these electrocutions occur strictly in Asian countries? None of these "electrocutions" occur in the Western world apparently.
 
Not only that, why do these electrocutions occur strictly in Asian countries? None of these "electrocutions" occur in the Western world apparently.

In the UK, the USB connector, the shield in the cable and by extension the case of the phone is attached to Earth. This is mandatory, every plug has to have a third pin, and the appliances that don't have a third pin must be double insulated (i.e. can't have a metal shell). If the case of the iPhone becomes live, it shorts through the USB cable shield, through the charger and blows the fuse in the plug. Or the RCD depending on the short.
 
I no longer use my phone when plugged in yo the wall, in fact I no longer plug it to the wall at all, I use a portable battery charger
 
We don't know it was the charger. That's just speculation.

I have two of apples au$25 lighting cables and both have had the insulation split and the cables fray at the lightning connector end.

I've seen dozens of other people with the same problem. I've also had a similar problem on my MBP chargers which have been replaced 3 times.

In my experience, Apples cables are equally crap.

So I guess it's just a coincidence that all these electrocutions occur with 3rd party chargers, right?
 
Re: Third Party Hardware....

And so it continues Third Party Hardware the cause but for the anti Apple brigade on ZDnet and the like the article will only be partially be read should it make it on to the ZDnet Forum.
 
In the UK, the USB connector, the shield in the cable and by extension the case of the phone is attached to Earth. This is mandatory, every plug has to have a third pin, and the appliances that don't have a third pin must be double insulated (i.e. can't have a metal shell). If the case of the iPhone becomes live, it shorts through the USB cable shield, through the charger and blows the fuse in the plug. Or the RCD depending on the short.


Yes, you are correct. It is designed that way. But what happens after the device fails? Lets say the transformer has an internal short the connects the primary and secondary. Now you have 240 volts on one of those hair-thin #40 wires inside the USB cable. With 240V something quickly fails inside the phone and the return path opens. Now you have a "hot" iPhone and the user supplies the only return path.

The system you describe only covers AC mains power equipment like the charger itself and you did not describe how the equipment remains safe after a failure that would cause open a ground.

Bottom line is that it is hard (but entirely possible) to design AC powered equipment that remains safe AFTER some internal parts have come loose inside and insulation has failed.

----------

....
In other words, it's impossible to determine the voltage of the phone's case vs ground from inside the phone, and as such, a crowbar circuit wouldn't work.
.

Yes, you are right. If there is only ONE conductor and no ground reference it would be hard for the phone to "know" its potential above ground. But as soon as a person touches the metal case there is now a ground reference.

The phone could in theory sense the voltage difference between the charger cable and the metal case. You'd need some resistance in there some place.

But how hard should Apple work to detect a defective charger?

Apple could solve the problem one and for all be NOT using conductive materials on the outside of the case.
 
I'm guessing you're probably more likely dying by taking your car to work than using a fake charger.

Nope. Not unless you drive a Pinto.

The fake chargers are inherently dangerous. Proper manufacturers such as Apple design their chargers very carefully (one side can be exposed to 250v in normal use in European countries, while the other should never exceed 5v), built with components and materials of a carefully selected quality, tested extensively by various certification boards and manufactured by trusted production partners. All of that costs money, and the costs are recouped by sales of the chargers.

The knockoff ones are built to be as cheap as possible in every way. Human safety be damned.

Don't believe me? http://youtu.be/wi-b9k-0KfE shows what the internals of these deathtraps are like. It's a wonder the death toll from these things isn't through the roof.

People selling these things should be imprisoned. It's criminally negligent to sell something so dangerous.
 
A man dies so cue racist and insensitive comments from the MR community.....

Some of you should be ashamed of yourselves.

Please help educate us. Which are the racist comments in this thread? I looked really hard... We need to know what types of things are considered racist by you, so we can correct and avoid such behavior. Thanks for your moral guidance.
 
I would blame a bad Brand X charger design which is allowing a hot wire to connect through the USB to the phone. There is just no excuse for that except greed in not providing proper front to back isolation.

----------

I've been a electrician for 23 years. The charger at best 20 gague wire. Doubt he was electrocuted. Shocked yes, the wire would burn up first.

Resistance is Useless! (if Ohms<1)
 
I don't see how a charger "not made by Apple" suddenly becomes a "FAKE" charger.

Apple isn't the only manufacturer of chargers.

Exactly why I'm not convinced that it's necessarily the chargers alone that are killing people. They aren't fake, they are chargers! What we're going to have is a world of people who are scared of using non-Apple chargers, thinking they are death traps!

Has anybody proven that by buying a non-Apple charger and not tinkering with the plug/dunking it in water, it is deadly right out of the box?

---

The only 'fake' components are unlicensed Apple-style USB cabled *cough cough 'lightning' cables*. Lightning cables... EVEN APPLE ONES fray REALLY easily!!! They are pretty poor quality designs because the plug's so small and the plastic around the end moves easily.

My suggestion is that (as shown in the picture)... people use ad-hoc repair methods when the cables break (Apple or otherwise... more likely Apple because after the original one nobody wants to pay $20-$30 for another bloody cable when they can get it for $2 and it'll last just as long). After the cable breaking too many times, people ind ad-hoc fixes.

This poor bugger put a metal cable tie around the frayed end. The result was possibly that he then touched the metal cable tie that was directly connected to the power line and ZAP!

---

For this I partly blame Apple. If they didn't make cables that broke (seriously, I have 15 year old micro USB cables that never frayed) then people wouldn't resort to ad-hoc fixes. Additionally if they didn't extort people by charging $20-$30 for a bloody cable then people would buy legit replacements.

Apple can't be responsible for stupidity when people make ad-hoc fixes. People see iPhones as 'cute' whereas they might not fix say... a power drill or hairdryer in the same manner. The iPhone doesn't seem as dangerous, but you're dealing with a live wire, so an ad-hoc fix (especially a really stupid one) isn't safe at all. BUT... if their cables were more durable AND affordable, people wouldn't use ad-hoc fixes (or cheaper replacement cables). Thailand/China... average monthly income of ~$50... sure I'll pay $25 for a bloody cable!!!

So my solution:
1) Don't do ad-hoc fixes to broken cables... especially using twisty pieces of metal. Bloody stupid...
2) Apple!!! Make more durable cables that will last 15 years being thrown around, bent in all different positions...etc because that's what people do with phone chargers/cables!!!
 
Er, no.

The majority of Apple sales occur outside the U.S. these days. Just look at Apple's SEC filings, the 10-Q reports, quarterly financial reports, etc.

China has been Apple's second largest market for a while now, should be Apple's #1 market in the not-too-distant future.

You are living in a delusional world where U.S.A. is still the economic hegemony.
According to http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q4fy13datasum.pdf that link, the U.S. tops Q4'13 revenue. Also, I wasn't saying the U.S. is where the most are, I said a majority, not the majority.

p.s. China accounted for a little more than a 3rd of Apple's revenue of America.
 
Who cares, just some random that will be forgotten about in days just like the rest of us when our time comes!
 
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