An Australia iPhone user wound up in hospital after his iPhone reportedly exploded after he fell on it while cycling over the weekend.
Thirty-six-year-old management consultant Gareth Clear says that the explosion was bad enough that it melted his cycling shorts and badly burned the skin on his upper right thigh.
“I just saw smoke coming out of my back pocket … and then all of a sudden I felt this surging pain,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald — adding that the “searing heat” produced by the iPhone burned through his shorts in seconds. “I just remember looking at my leg and I had this black discharge all down my leg and this smell of phosphorus,” he continued.
While Apple hasn’t publicly commented on the story, the company is reportedly in touch with Gareth Clear concerning the incident.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about exploding iPhones. Back in 2014, panic broke out on a flight bound for Prague after an iPhone 5 caught fire in a passenger’s bag, resulting in the plane being evacuated back to the main terminal. At the end of last year, an Atlanta man also claimed his iPhone 6 Plus caught fire when he was charging it in his home, setting his bed on fire in the process.
While the reason for these incidents often comes down to people using dodgy third-party chargers, or their iPhone overheating due to an electrical error, on this particular occasion it sounds like Gareth Clear damaged his iPhone’s lithium battery, which can be result in malfunctions as the result of significant physical impact.
Fortunately, it sounds like things could have been a lot worse …
