iPhone 7 bursts into flames on user’s bedside table

A woman in East China’s Jiangsu Province claims that a new Matte Black iPhone 7 exploded while she was charging it next to her bed.

The woman, who is identified only as Yin, says that she was fortunately out of the room when the incident happened. “My phone ran out of battery, so I left it to charge on my bedside table,” she said. “I went out for a walk and heard the explosion when I came home. Then I realized it was my phone.”

Aside from photos showing the charred body of the iPhone — appearing to show that the handset’s lithium-ion polymer battery exploded — there is not much more detail in the news report. Yin reportedly took the iPhone to an Apple “service station,” where the staff confirmed that the iPhone was legitimate and hadn’t been tampered with.

While such incidents are statistically rare — given that Apple has sold upwards of 1 billion iPhones, and has never had to recall a handset as Samsung did with its doomed Note 7 — this news comes at a time when there have been a few similar reports in the press.

Recently, an iPhone 6 Plus owner reported that her own handset burst into flames while lying on her bedside table. The flames from Amanda Bentz’s iPhone were enough to wake up her husband, while the explosion blew the iPhone’s display out of its aluminum housing, shattered the glass, and melted the plastic case.

In another recent incident, an iPhone 7 Plus reportedly exploded and began pouring out while sitting on its own owner’s dresser. A video of that particular incident went viral when it was posted on Twitter.

For its part, Apple has investigated individual cases, and warned customers that they should use “only accessories that Apple has certified” — which includes potentially dangerous third-party chargers.

Apple has also clamped down on counterfeit cables and chargers being sold on platforms like Amazon. At the end of last year, the company filed a lawsuit against Mobile Star, claiming almost 90 percent of its accessories are fakes and pose a risk to users.

Source: The Sun

Luke Dormehl

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.