iPhone Meltdown Update
Here’s an update on the iPhone meltdown we wrote about awhile back. Tim Colbourne in Rome plugged in his iPhone 3G to his computer’s USB port and left it to charge. Three hours later, it caught fire. The above is an aftermath pic.
About two and a half weeks after his post, a replacement iPhone arrived. Holburne returned the flambè phone so that Apple’s engineers could pick it apart to figure out what happened.
On his blog, Colbourne notes:
“I won’t say it was the easiest process. Apple’s European headquarters in Ireland explained that ordinarily this would be classed as ‘accidental damage,’ and would not be under warranty. Apparently, iPhone fires are so rare that the company assumes that faulty parts are not to blame and that it must be in some way connected to user error…In my case I was lucky that the Apple engineers had seen the story, checked out the photo, and wanted to get their hands on the phone in return for a new one.
The takeaway here seems to be, yes, iPhone fires are perhaps a fluke but if anything happens to your iPhone or Apple product, blogging about it helps get some satisfaction – though Colbourne says his first post was just to see whether anyone else had encountered the same problem.
Via A Roman Thought
Nicole Martinelli is a San Francisco native who has lived in Milan and Florence, Italy. She's written for Wired.com, The New York Times and Newsweek. You can find her on 
