iPhone 4 burns, hurts owner Some bloke's iPhone 4 has reportedly caught fire. Well, kind of. What appears to be a duff USB port - whether on the handset or the device it was connected to isn't known, the marks on the cable's connector suggest the former - caused the conflagration which scorched the phone and melted the dock cable's plastic surround. …
It's certainly not the first Apple device to get a little too toasty but given the number of iPhone 4 handsets sold so far one bursting into flames is little more than a statistical footnote. If it starts happening more frequently then it'll be a big deal but at the moment I'd suggest it's the least of their problems!
Flames because.. what else? :)
a muppet could see that the connector melted and left a mark on the phone, not the other way around.
Unless the phone is capable of bursting into flames, melting nearby plastic and somehow repairing itself through nano-technology to appear like it suffered a minor heating.
Now theres a conspiracy for the Transformers fans !!
why isnt this story classed as ROTM?
"the marks on the cable's connector suggest the former"
The end of the cable that was damaged doesn't really indicate where the fault was, just where it got hot.
I would have thought the most likely explanation is that it's a duff cable, or maybe a bit of conductive material like foil got stuck in the connector and shorted it out.
...surely came with the phone.
Cables and the attached connectors are always denigrated in purchasing, just making an electrical connection is not enough. Support, and it's enemy, flexing are critical in the equation|incantations needed to make a proper cable.
Anyone that has made an RJ-45 or RJ-11 has a gut understanding of the problems involved. Good old AT&T; in the old days they were wonderful. Robber Barons are generally better than Greedy Carriers (tm.)
Did you know that in the USA there is a $1500 fine for selling an RJ connector with less than X microns of gold on it?
Are you throwing away "YOUR" gold?
If you are sure of the value of the fine, could you be bothered to dig up the value of X and an explanation of why it is a length, noting that microns are a unit of length? For that matter, how about the law governing the aforestated fine, evidence of which I cannot seem to find anywhere?
The word 'stunned' is what best describes the Apple hardware designers.
After a series of fires emanating from several models they have marketed in recent years you would have thought Apple would have designed in current limiting components.
Guess Jobs can't fix this latest with another software patch! And as they have already absolved the iCrap owner of fault that leaves only one entity ... Apple.
Maybe they should get HTC to design the iCrap5. They never seem to have fires or bad antennae.
"After a series of fires emanating from several models they have marketed in recent years you would have thought Apple would have designed in current limiting components."
Yeah, last time around the problem was limited to those who had their iPods under their pillows with their heads on top. That did a good job of preventing air circulation. Guess what? Bed clothes are usually pretty good insulators (for obvious reasons). Go back and check the articles about the fires - they were all caused in similar ways!
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