The Chinese iPhone market is exploding, but perhaps a bit too literally for one Hong Kong woman, who claims that her 128GB iPhone 6 Plus exploded while being charged — not only separating the screen from the handset, but significantly melting the back cover.
The owner says she plugged the charger into the iPhone at 1am on Saturday, leaving it on the desk next to her bed. She was awoken around seven hours later by a loud bang, and a burning iPhone.
While the woman wasn’t hurt, she says she is asking for compensation from Apple. She claims she was using authentic Apple products, including the charger, although she notes that she was using an iPad charging cable — which shouldn’t make any difference.
Lo Kok-kung from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University told Chinese tabloid the Daily Apple that the incident could be the result of a short circuit or overcharging.
“The auto power cut-off feature of the handset for charging could have been out of order, hence the battery was overcharged and exploded due to excessive heat,” Lo said.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about exploding Apple products, although they are very rare. Last year, a plane on its way to Prague had to be evacuated after an iPhone 5 caught fire in a passenger’s bag. In 2013, an iPad exploded in Australia, causing severe damage to a Vodafone store in Canberra. In another instance, a flaming iPhone 5c set a girl’s pants on fire.
While it’s not reported as part of today’s story, it is likely that Apple will request the iPhone 6 Plus in question so that it can make its own investigations. Still, with record-breaking number of iPhone 6 units having sold since last September, I think it’s safe to say that this isn’t in any way a widespread fault.
Source: EJInsight
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
8 responses to “iPhone 6 Plus explodes in Hong Kong (literally)”
How many iPhones have been sold vs how many have exploded? I’m sure it’s a fairly insignificant number of exploding iPhones. One out every ten million, maybe.
So you’re saying Explosiongate is upon us? ;)
Lets see the charger she was using. That is my first suspect, frayed cable or aftermarket charger.
Pretty scary. I’ve had it happen with my iPhone 6 Plus multiple times where I charge it overnight and when I wake up, the battery is at 1% and the phone is burning hot! Never exploded though! When it’s happens to me, I think that a specific app did it where it wasn’t properly running in the background and was hammering the battery life causing the ramp in heat and the rampdown of battery life. This has happened to me probably three or four times.
And I thought that only Samsung phones exploded for no reason at all
Aren’t most phone explosions due to badly made third party chargers or chargers that have been user damaged? I wonder if this is another one of those statistics.
We are talking about China. For all we know she could have bought everything from a fake Apple Store!
Gosh lady what did you expect? the battery was made in China.