iPhone 4/4S 'self combusts' in airliner inferno An iPhone caused a small emergency in an Australian airplane after it inexplicably started to glow red and emit "significant amounts of dense smoke" as the craft touched down in Sydney airport. A flight attendant extinguished the phone immediately, reported the Regional Express Airline news service, and no passengers or crew …
Such a ban would force Apple to stop treating their users a bit less like children or intellectual pygmies, or face losing millions of pounds in custom from the people who use their iStuff for business. Even the biggest Apple fan can't deny that this would be a good thing.
Come on. You, of all trolls, know how Google names their Android versions Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sarnie...
They even put up Androids dolls representing them, playground style. Here, see for yourself:
http://www.androidfreeze.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Android-Ice-Cream-Sandwich.jpg
Can't really get any more child-like than that.
10/10 for originality; I like it! And I apologise for the barb; long day.
On a serious note, Ubuntu is referred to by and often laughed at for it's code names. Add to that that the versions are more-often-than-not referred to by the release codename i.e. "CM7 sports the most Vanilla look you can find on a Gingerbread ROM". I get what you were trying to illustrate, but you know as well as everyone else that official name != familiar name. If you're going to call one device a toy; be prepared to have your favourite mocked back. The code names *are* a bit childish, but that is Google all over. You could argue, more reasonably, that FroYo or Ice Cream Sandwich are far more consumer friendly...
Sort of -- Lithium *ion* batteries will expand and contract as they are charged/discharged and that will stress the cell containers and possibly rupture them and cause a short/malfunction.
Lithium *polymer* batteries, like those used in basically all cell phones, do not suffer from this problem.
So while they can still overheat, catch fire, etc. from malfunctioning electronics that cause them to discharge too fast, I doubt this has much to do with age or wear.
If it was glowing and smoking as the aircraft touched down then the passenger should have had it turned off. Even when using flight mode phones should be tuurned off during take off and landing. Clearly this was the plane's self defence mechanism. In my head, something like...
"I'm Sorry Dave, you cannot let you play Angry Birds.... Stop.... I'm aftraid I can't let you do that Dave"
On a more serious note, as Both an iPhone 4 owner and a Samsung Galaxy SII owner, only one will remain in my jeans pocket inches away from my balls.
I would be interested to know what he was doing at the time of the smoke out too. I hope for Apples sake that it was not just sitting idle.
It might have been idle, who cares.
The phone does not have a self destruct feature that can accidentally be activated by a bug in Angry Birds.
There was clearly a hardware malfunction with the power circuitry that caused the battery to short out. Nothing to do with software, presumably.
Well, that's how I serve baked apples, anyway.
Or possibly a layer of crumble.
Li-ion batteries can go foom for a variety of reasons - I wonder if he was charging it from the sockets some flights have for laptops, and it overcharged - or any one of a number of other possibilities.
Anyways, bring them on - as Alan Denman says above, the more these sort of things happen, the less chance of having to put up with loud-mouthed reps trying to be heard over the obligatory baby cries.
"An iPhone caused a small emergency in an Australian airplane after it inexplicably started to glow red and emit "significant amounts of dense smoke" as the craft touched down in Sydney airport "
Shouldn't the passenger have switched the phone off prior to descent? Or does that rule apply only to *other* electronic devices?
I'm curious; where did you read that the passenger switched it on? I read the media release from Rex, complete with the photo and it didn't say anything about it being switched on.
Or are you assuming it was switched on; because when it is switched off, it no longer exists and therefore cannot combust?
I would always assume that a combusting electrical device was switched on at the time, as using electricity generates heat. Occam's Razor: the hotter something is, the fewer additional factors are required for it to reach combustion point.
My own smartphone has at times become quite warm during periods of intense use, but never when it's just sitting in my shirt pocket. The guy was using it, no need for facetiousness.
A Smartphone keeps running, even when it is turned off. Yes, at extremely low power levels, and with almost everything turned off. But it is still "on" - after all, my Nokia E66 rang the alarm even when I turned it "off.
And a Li-Ion battery may burns itself down even with no load. All that is needed is an internel short - wich can be caused by corrosion, wear and tear and so on.
The IPhone could be on. Could, even, beeing in use. But not necessarily.
But as I said: the more heat a phone is generating, the more likely it is that it *will* happen. That's where Occam's Razor comes in - in the absence of definite proof, the most probable solution is the one requiring the fewest factors. And when there have already been stories of the same thing happening to other models of the iPhone when it is in use, that's further fuel for the fire (so to speak).
Li batteries are not just a lump of stuff, they have their own internal electronics, which can go bad. The battery might have shorted out internally, resulting in a current flow limited only by the small internal resistance. This could easily result in smoke, fire or even explosion - it's happened before in laptops and other products. This article: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/dell-battery-fire.htm has info on the 2006 recall. I don't know if the Apple batteries are the same kind (in fact I doubt it) but there is still a lot of energy stored in those little things.
That is a very interesting point, but it all depends on where you are.
When I was playing with Li-Ion batteries, the "clever people" who won't let you take your water in planes in England said that all the spare batteries for your laptop had to be in the hold, for safety reasons. The clever people in the US said they must not go in the hold because of the issue you raised, for safety reasons.
Obviously you have to get out and go around to the boot while flying over the atlantic to perform the switch!
Therefore implies that it has been measured
Which means it is a known fault
Which means Apple must be sued for knowingly selling and advertising goods unfit for purpose. That they cannot identify which units fall into the percentage is irrelevant.
So a complete product recalled is also required as they cannot issue new batteries to people because you're not allowed to change the battery.
Judging by the model number A1332 on the picture, it is an iPhone 4 and not a 4S so it could have been down to a dodgy batch of batteries from the battery supplier.
http://www.everymac.com/ultimate-mac-lookup/?search_keywords=A1332
I wonder if the batteries are made by the same company that made the infamous exploding Dell laptop batteries? I think that at the time it was Sony?
Cheers,
... is what almost certainly accounted for the UPS 747F that crashed in Dubai earlier in the year. It was carrying several tonnes of them, all brand new and in packaging designed for shipment.
No obvious reason for ignition but since they are self-oxidising neither depressurisation nor halon will put the fire out. You can't ship them discharged because then the battery will almost certainly never work again.
Tricky problem really...
http://www.techtudo.com.br/noticias/noticia/2011/11/iphone-4-de-brasileira-pega-fogo-sozinho-no-meio-da-madrugada.html
Yes, it is in portuguese. Roughly, it says:
"IPhone of a brazilian woman gets on fire in the middle of the night."
It was an IPhone 4, and it was recharging.
Nuking electronics at Airports...
In the X-RAY scanners is never a god idea, especially if you know anything about how the guts of a IC are made (X-Ray Lithography) Duh!.......
So having your high value electronics kit be effectively hosed down at the atomic level is just asking for said kit to the develop whiskers(lead free solder [epic fail there] ) on the solder joints or breakdowns of insulation within either the batteries or high density IC's, which will lead to a full on short circuit and hi risk of a meltdown and fire.
sooner or later someones flight will crash due to a fire in the cabin or hold due to such a cause, then electronics gear wont be allowed to be irradiated or maybe even carried, unlike the passengers.
this time it was a close call, next time they might not be so lucky...
> In the X-RAY scanners is never a god idea, especially if you know anything
> about how the guts of a IC are made (X-Ray Lithography)
If you did know anything about how ICs are made, you'd know that's total cobblers.
> just asking for said kit to the develop whiskers
Nonsense. Whiskers are down to the crystalline nature of the solder, and are exacerbated by mechanical and thermal stresses. The amount of heating you'd get from an X-ray machine just doesn't feature.
> this time it was a close call
Perhaps it was. But your attempts at scare-mongering really don't help the discussion.
Vic.
If you look at the picture of the phone, you can clearly see that the phone has been modified. The apple logo has Jobs face in the bite... Nice try trolls. GL with your malware, volume turning off, devices stuck on same OS, and phones that will be outdated and wont be sold in 3 months.
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