An iPhone 6 reportedly burst into flames while it was being held by an 11-year-old California girl.
Apple is replacing the iPhone and asked for the device, likely so it can diagnose what went so wrong.
“I had my phone in my hand and then I saw sparks flying everywhere and I just threw it on a blanket,” Kayla Ramos told 23ABC News.
No one was injured, and the only property damage was to the blanket.
Rare but not unheard of
The iPhone 6 does not have a reputation for catching fire. If it did, Apple would have recalled it years ago, as Samsung did with the Galaxy Note 7.
However, any phone becomes a fire hazard if the Li-ion battery inside gets damaged. What might look like a minor ding to the exterior can result in a dangerous situation.
“When crushed, punctured, ripped or dropped, lithium-ion batteries can produce what the industry euphemistically calls a ‘thermal event.’ It happens because these batteries short circuit when the super-thin separator between their positive and negative parts gets breached,” noted the Washington Post in an article about the dangers of the batteries in just about every electronic device.
That’s probably why Apple wants to check little Kayla’s iPhone 6.
