Smartphones don’t always need faulty batteries to go boom. One iPhone 6 Plus owner learned this the hard way after being rudely awoken by her handset when it burst into flames on her nightstand.
“It was just like a ‘shhhhhh,’ kind of like fireworks,” Amanda Bentz told WFLA. “It literally blew flames right out the side of the phone.”
Bentz’s iPhone was charging beside her bed at the time, and the flames were enough to wake up her husband. The explosion also blew the iPhone’s display out of its aluminum housing, shattered the glass, and melted the plastic case.
It also caused damage to her comforter, pillow case, and curtains. Bentz said if her husband hadn’t have woken up, “it would have caught the curtain on fire, and then the bed.”
Bentz isn’t the only iPhone owner who’s had battery issues. In fact, another guy on her street, Greg Miceli, returned home last week to find the battery inside his iPhone 6 Plus had expanded, causing the display to break. The device was not charging at the time, WFLA reports.
Apple is aware of Bentz’s situation and says it is looking into it. The company has also offered her a replacement device.
Millions of iPhones are sold every day and occurrences like this are rare, so you don’t need to worry yours is going to bang. But like every device with a lithium-ion battery, there is a very small chance that there will be flames should the battery fail.
Killian Bell is a freelance writer based in the U.K. He has an interest in all things tech and also covers Android over at CultofAndroid.com. You can follow him on Twitter via @killianbell.
11 responses to “Exploding iPhone 6 Plus gives owner rude awakening”
I think it’s safe to say Apple is boomed.
hahaha I think it’s safe to say.. that your just a poor little troll hahaha
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I think it’s safe to say c0nath was joking.
yeah, its safe
See, iPhones can do everything that Android phones can do!
hahaha.. nice try .. but not even close.. lol https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2738b9878c8e3b89b42774db86a40efc9b91e8a3b1565cfb03089ea9d2747d3a.jpg
Likely a junky charger. Happens all the time.
My thoughts exactly. Use a cheap knock-off, which many people do “to save money,” and it will damage the battery. Might not explode right away, but it could at some point, even while not connected to a charger.
I’m surprised to see that, since the voltage and charge current are regulated within the phone, not within the power adapter (technically, it’s not a charger).
The Apple power adapters provide 5.0V, just like USB ports. If you fed that 5.0V straight into an iPhone 6 battery, that 3.82V battery would be destroyed, proving that the charge regulation occurs within the phone (not in the cable — too small house 1A regulation or DC-DC conversion).
With an adapter that provided too much voltage, the phone would likely go open circuit when the charging circuit was damaged (ask me how I know…).
Have you seen any forensic analysis of the failures you’ve mentioned? I’d really like to read up on such failures as I am an EE and find that kind of thing fascinating.
My iPhone 5 battery started to swell which in turn pushed the front glass away , it was over two years out of warranty and I not knowing any better at the time had it repaired by a 3rd partythinking the glass was the culprit . Less than 2 days later the same thing happened and he identified the fault was with the battery which he changed . I Googled this and discovered it had happened to others , contacted  and explained the situation. The serial number was taken and I was contacted the same day and even though I’d got it repaired by a 3rd party they credited the £55 I’d spent out back into my bank account !