As local outlet 7 News reported, Australian surfing instructor Mat Jones said he had left his iPhone 7 under clothes in his car while taking a surf lesson. Upon returning to his vehicle, he was shocked to discover it filled with smoke and burned up in the same area where he’d placed the phone.
“His pants, which he had wrapped the iPhone 7 in before heading to his lesson, were still on fire when he got to his car,” Fortune added. Could Apple have a massive iPhone 7 overheating problem on its hands akin to Samsung’s exploding Galaxy Note 7?
The guy bought his iPhone 7 just one week ago and says he hasn’t dropped it or used a foreign charger. He thinks though the phone was to blame for the incident and shared images and video showing the molten remains of the device and the damage it caused.
“Ash was just coming from inside the pants, which then once you wrapped open the pants, the phone was just melting inside of it,” Jones told 7 News.
Apple is aware of his complaint. In a statement to Fortune, an Apple spokesperson said the firm is “in touch” with Jones and investigating the matter.
Lithium-ion battery technology does not react well to heat.
Temperatures in Australia can run so high that the sun can melt the plastic interior components of cars. As Jones left the phone in his car, it’s entirely possible that the device became so hot that the heat caused the battery to burst into flames.
Could this be an isolated incident or a sign of things to come?
9to5Mac’s Ben Lovejoy explains it succinctly:
That there have been a number of iPhone fires over the years is in no way surprising. The overall failure rate of lithium batteries is around 1 in 10 million.
When you have a billion active iOS devices, you’d expect around 100 of them to catch fire, so a handful of isolated cases is not evidence of any issue specific to the iPhone.
In comparison, the Note 7 has suffered 94 known fires in just a few weeks with only about five million devices shipped. In the meantime, even President Obama is making fun of Samsung’s discontinued and exploding Galaxy Note 7 phablet.
In a speech today, Obama compared Obamacare to a smartphone, saying when a law has a few bugs, you fix it rather than just throw it away.
Unless it catches fire. Then you pull it off the market. But you don’t go back to using a rotary phone. You don’t say “well, we’re repealing smartphones.” We’re just gonna do the dial-up thing. That’s not what you do. The same basic principle applies here. We’re not gonna go back to discriminating against Americans with pre-existing conditions.
What do you guys make of this?
Source: 7 News, Fortune