iPhone 4 Explodes Midflight on Australian Airline

[carpetmojo]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

I don't remember hearing about this:

That's 'cos it's a security problem, prob'ly - they might have to bow to government demands to check and test each individual battery on every electronic gizmo in anyone's luggage in hold or cabin..........

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by markT4

This is kind of scary and we should demand a lot more in manufacturing quality from a large company like Apple.

http://news.yahoo.com/iphone-4-explo...224014583.html

Apple doesn't manufacturer anything, they buy components and outsource assembly to the usual suspects, just like everybody else.

[afa]

Originally Posted by kartu

Maybe owner held it wrong way?

Good one.

PPS
Li batteries have built-in controller, that is supposed to prevent such situations (hm, I thought it could only happen when charging). Logically faulty controller should be a pretty common problem, yet I've only heared/seen such things only in connection with company that has invented rectangular shape with rounded corner.

Then you must not read very much. Numerous devices over the last several years have had battery overheating issues. Just 2 posts before yours HarryT provided a link to an article which mentions the mass recall of a multitude of laptops by different manufacturers (Dell, Sony, Fujitsu, Lenovo, and, yes, Apple) due to battery overheating issues. The numbers were over 7 million (and this was back in 2006). Reading in Wiki, I see that in August 2007 Nokia recalled 46 million batteries. All were lithium-ion. I haven't bothered researching what the figures as of 2011 are, but the list is very long indeed.

So either you truly didn't know about other companies' battery issues (highly unlikely, unless you garner all your tech news from a single anti-Apple source) or you deliberately stated something you know to be false because it fits in with your general anti-Apple sentiments.

My money is on the latter.

[monkeyluis]

If I knew when a battery would fail I'd give them out as gifts to select people.

[Danielle]

Originally Posted by monkeyluis

If I knew when a battery would fail I'd give them out as gifts to select people.

ROTFL!!! Me too!

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by HarryT

We should perhaps treat these reports of "exploding" iPhones with a degree of caution, because we've heard it all before. This, from 2009, concerning "exploding" iPhone 3GS's:



Full article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8227028.stm

Of course, that's not to say that the battery isn't the culprit in this latest case, but it may perhaps be as well not to pre-judge the matter.

This article you talks about broken screens. Judging by the image from the article in the OP it doesn't look like the screen was the problem:

[HarryT]

No, that does indeed look like the battery.

[Pinecone]

Wasn't there a problem a few years ago with iPods and batteries overheating?

Li-ion/Lipo packs do not have anything in them to prevent this, unless someone adds such circuitry. That can be part of the pack or part of the device using them.

I had run lipo (same battery in cell phones and readers, different from the li-ion in laptops) in RC modeling for a number of years. Failures of usch batteries come from several causes:

Too high if discharge rate - short one of these and it gets nasty.

Charging after being overly discharged - if the battery is discharged to too low of a voltage, when trying to charge it, it can have issues.

Overcharging - these cells are limited to 4.2 volts per cell MAX voltage. Higher voltage applied to a cell will cause it to fail.

Damage - if a cell is damaged it can fail or it might not fail until the next time being charged.

Leaving the cell fully charged for a period of time will cause a loss of capacity, but not a violent failure.

The cells contain an amount of flammable solvent, so whenthey over heat, and the envelope ruptures, the solvent can catch fire. The industry calls such failrues as "venting with flame."

[DustyDisks]

Originally Posted by Pinecone

Wasn't there a problem a few years ago with iPods and batteries overheating?

Li-ion/Lipo packs do not have anything in them to prevent this, unless someone adds such circuitry. That can be part of the pack or part of the device using them.

I had run lipo (same battery in cell phones and readers, different from the li-ion in laptops) in RC modeling for a number of years. Failures of usch batteries come from several causes:

Too high if discharge rate - short one of these and it gets nasty.

Charging after being overly discharged - if the battery is discharged to too low of a voltage, when trying to charge it, it can have issues.

Overcharging - these cells are limited to 4.2 volts per cell MAX voltage. Higher voltage applied to a cell will cause it to fail.

Damage - if a cell is damaged it can fail or it might not fail until the next time being charged.

Leaving the cell fully charged for a period of time will cause a loss of capacity, but not a violent failure.

The cells contain an amount of flammable solvent, so whenthey over heat, and the envelope ruptures, the solvent can catch fire. The industry calls such failrues as "venting with flame."

When that type of battery first came out, there was a big stink about them exploding and catching fire in laptops. I think that was why they started putting protection circuity in them to prevent that, overcharging and over heating that causes those battery's to do bad things.

[SeaKing]

This is an old problem that has been worked on for years and is better these days than when Lithium batteries first came out.

We even had fires on airliners from "backup" Lithium batteries. The Lithium batteries were used because they were so light relative to Ni-Cad or Lead batteries. These batteries could never be charged. There were problems sometimes with severe cabin depressurization because the batteries had a lot of pressure in them.

The Lithium Ion batteries are made for recharging. They work very well because they are light and don't have a memory retention problem like Ni-Cad. There can still be a gas build up and there are vents usually. The charging circuitry is supposed to keep things under control but of course anything can fail.

If there is electricity, you can have over heating and possibly a fire.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by SeaKing

This is an old problem that has been worked on for years and is better these days than when Lithium batteries first came out.

We even had fires on airliners from "backup" Lithium batteries. The Lithium batteries were used because they were so light relative to Ni-Cad or Lead batteries. These batteries could never be charged. There were problems sometimes with severe cabin depressurization because the batteries had a lot of pressure in them.

Very true. This, as an interesting trivia fact, is why lithium ion batteries are not permitted on spacecraft; they are considered to be too dangerous. So no Kindles for the astronauts on the International Space Station!

[Razi]

Even more non-trivial fact: Galaxy Nexus has problems with suden diminishing of volume because of a bug in Android Ice Cream Sandwich. There is no mention of that on this forum although this was on the BBC News last week. Yes the voulume becomes silent without any user interferance. If it was an Apple product, this would have been splashed everywhere, specailly on Mobile Read Forum and would have been dubbed 'silentgate'. One battery exploded somewhere over the outback and it makes it here. Apparantly Nexus is Samsung's flagship smartphone running Google's latest OS:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15870020

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Razi

Even more non-trivial fact: Galaxy Nexus has problems with suden diminishing of volume because of a bug in Android Ice Cream Sandwich. There is no mention of that on this forum although this was on the BBC News last week. Yes the voulume becomes silent without any user interferance.

That bug appears to have been fixed rather quickly. Eg, from Expansys, a major UK "gadget" site:

Our stock has had a Google approved firmware update applied to it by Samsung's distributors in order to fix the bug with volume control that affected some original stock.

Perhaps nobody's talking about it because Google fixed it?

[MrReset]

That's Apple: Low-tech for high-price!

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Very true. This, as an interesting trivia fact, is why lithium ion batteries are not permitted on spacecraft; they are considered to be too dangerous. So no Kindles for the astronauts on the International Space Station!

Oh no!!! That's torn it!