Apple iPad torched this guy's home, lawsuit claims A defective iPad sparked a house fire this time last year, a lawsuit filed against Apple has claimed. The legal challenge [PDF] was filed this month in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, and this week removed to a federal district court in east of that US state. The complaint alleges that "a fire …
I suspect the issue is that modern device batteries are designed to be strong and small ... and not replaced or safe.
Does anyone remember their laptop having any issues like this back in the days when it booted up and MS-DOS prompted the user? Phones never had these problems when the battery compartment could be opened up and the battery replaced in less than 20 seconds.
Let's watch the lawsuit - will Michael Macaluso be counter sued for "causing" the fire?
I'm afraid you're conflating two separate issues - the removability of the batteries should have zero effect on their flammability. Actually you could argue that making the battery removable increases the risk of fire due to the inherent risk of damage during handling of the battery and the potential damage to the connectors by repeated insertions and removals. (I'd still take a removable battery if I could, but not on the grounds of safety!)
The real issue is that modern batteries contain significantly higher energies in a much smaller form factor than anything that existed 20 years ago. That battery in your old DOS laptop had an energy density less than a quarter (probably less than 10%) of the energy density of a modern battery. The higher the energy density of a battery, the more difficult it is for everything - controlling cooling, charging, keeping it all from exploding. But modern devices need the extra energy, the batteries running those old brick mobile phones would barely last 5 minutes on a modern smart phone. It's just the way it is.
Energy Density is what causes these problems in new phones, not the fact that the batteries are no longer removable. And whilst our devices continue to become more and more energy hungry, this is not a problem that is going to go away anytime soon.
Energy density and dodgy design. I imagine if all the squealers demanding user-replaceable batteries in phones had their way, it would only be a matter of time before cheap unsafe knock-off batteries became a big issue. Want to see your phone doing a fiery impression of Thunderbird 3 at launch? Put a high energy density crappily designed battery in it.
"I'm afraid you're conflating two separate issues - the removability of the batteries should have zero effect on their flammability. Actually you could argue that making the battery removable increases the risk of fire due to the inherent risk of damage during handling of the battery and the potential damage to the connectors by repeated insertions and removals. (I'd still take a removable battery if I could, but not on the grounds of safety!)"
Based on the insides of modern laptops i've seen (too many!), batteries intended to be internal only and only user replaceable with difficulty if at all, I'd say that the manufactures of non-user-replaceable batteries have minimised the casing/container which the chemicals are wrapped in since theoretically they can't be accessed and the device maker wants it to be as light as possible. A swollen battery is therefore far more likely to burst and cause a more catastrophic episode than a battery designed to be user replaced.
I think the questions to be asked regarding the glue that is used in lieu of removability: Is the glue flammable? Is it thermally conductive to dissipate build-up of heat? Hopefully the answers are no and yes, respectivily.
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"I am nervous each time I connect a device to charge"
A battery is only likely to be a problem through misuse or manufacturing defect, uncommon for internal batteries in a well known brand. I would be more worried about the charger being used. Plenty of scope for a rogue charger causing the battery to overheat, or for a cheap charger to start the fire. Even the charger itself can be a problem without being connected to a battery. Check out some of BigClive's tear downs for chargers presenting mains potential on the USB output.
We need a safer battery technology
yeah well the obligatory snarky response of "people in hell need ice water" aside, to get a lightweight high capacity battery, you need a lightweight highly reactive material like Lithium...
Resolving THAT contradiction would probably be like the proverbial "better mouse trap"
Years ago there were scares of fires starting in laptops, especially onboard planes. I remember work colleagues who did not wait until their laptops had shut down completely before closing the lid, which meant the laptop was still processing.
There were also lots of nice soft cases for laptops, which had lovely thermal insulation properties. I reckon a few fires were started by a laptop left on, stuck in a neoprene cover and put on charge. Don't know about iPad fires though, but I'd like to know whether it was in a thick, insulating cover while being charged.
IF a phone is designed correctly then it will terminate charging if the temperature gets too high. (Likewise it should throttle down or shut off if too hot.)
Not being familiar with the internals of the iPhone, I do not know if it has these common sense provisions.
If phones used LiFePO4 batteries instead of the more common types of lithium-ion then battery fires would cease to be a problem - however the phones would need to be a bit thicker and heavier for the same runtime. (Because LiFePO4 batteries do not degrade as fast as common lithium-ion batteries the phones would also last longer before battery replacement was needed.)
Icon for burning phones ============>
Not being familiar with the internals of the iPhone, I do not know if it has these common sense provisions.
Yup. They're part of the charging electronics. Part of that became necessary because of the fast charging these phones can do which puts extra strain on the battery.
What I'd like to know is if that iPad still had the original battery. Quite a number of these replacement batteries are not quite up to scratch. This is not helped by the fact that Apple charges quite a lot of money for replacing it, so people go elsewhere.
That said, the volume of Apple devices going toasty has been very low, which is good news.
I used to cycle to work and had a laptop in a backpack, one day it didn’t shut down properly by the time I got home (about 15 minutes) my back was very warm.
Regarding charging, leave the device on a non flammable surface (I.e. not the pile of newspapers my charging phone is on now!) and Use a good quality cable (oem or something better than an eBay 50p job)
Without the fire report it is difficult to know but I would probably blame the charger or the cable rather than the device - although anything can go wrong. I remember opening up a pc to swap some internal part, plugged it in to test everything before the case went on and had a little flame on the motherboard shoot out of a capacitor. The machine went straight back to the supplier....
When I charge my laptops, I make sure they are vertical or upside-down, so that the battery is not covered in any way. I also try to prop up the charger so that it does not get too hot. Probably excessive, but after having both a hard plastic cover and a neoprene 'Crumpler' case for it which kept it nice and toasty, I'm a bit more careful these days.
I used to cycle to work and had a laptop in a backpack, one day it didn’t shut down properly by the time I got home (about 15 minutes) my back was very warm.
I always place my laptop on my backpack with the side vents pointing up, since there's a chance of it powering up for updates, and the laptop may be on the backpack for days.
While an over-heating laptop will just shut down, I'm still worried for long term effects of all the electronics, solders etc.
My (perhaps slightly paranoid) technique for changing devices is a) don’t leave them plugged in all the time. When they’re charged, they’re charged. b) Never fit a cheap battery - I use only quality, respected or OEM brands and c) I don’t leave them unattended for the first five minutes, and during that first five minutes I touch the device periodically with the back of my hand to see if I can feel any unexpected thermal hotspots.
This has worked for me - a phablet that I was borrowing to test some software that I’d written decided to run away when I was charging it and it quickly became almost too hot to touch. I have no doubt that if I’d left it charging it would have burned. I unplugged it, put it in a metal tray, dumped a bag of frozen peas on it for good measure, and then put the whole lot into the garden. I was able to return the device to its owner intact (and borrow a non defective device).
I replaced a phone (not an iPhone) about a year ago when I periodically noticed it getting very warm in my pocket. I could turn it off and back on again and it would be good again for a few days. However, I decided to replace the phone when it went into its high discharge mode (heating up), it would drop the remaining charge by 50% in less than 1/2 hour. I figured it was only a matter of time before it could go into a higher discharge mode and combust. In my case, I don't know if the problem was a battery that suddenly was self-discharging or a defective component in the phone going into a near short-circuit condition. I suspect the problem was the phone and not the battery, but I will never know for sure.
They were using a knock off charger from Amazon or even ebay. More reason more needs to be done to regulate or crack down on Amazon due Chinese sellers being able to sell stuff that shouldn't be sold in the UK. Home furniture with no fire labels etc. The other day I ran into one device a Chinese seller was selling. Their company name "Nottingham Shopping Centre" clearly hoping people see that and assume they are a UK company.
The battery charge regulation takes place in the phone - unless the charger has so high a voltage that it breaks the electronics in the phone, the charger should make no difference.
A charger provides a voltage feed (typically 5 volts) at whatever current the phone asks for up to the limit of the charger. If the voltage does not exceed the limit for the phone then the charger is not responsible for any fire in the phone. (If the charger catches fire then that IS the fault of the charger.)
Indeed. This blog really can't be linked enough times, also follow the links at the end to some actual teardowns - http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html Chargers are an absolute nightmare, and certainly not simply a case of blindly supplying the requested voltage as Duncan Macdonald suggests above. As that post mentions, poor voltage regulation in counterfeit chargers frequently causes serious issues with the operation of a device, including preventing touchscreens from working at all while plugged in. You'd hope a device would at least have enough fault protection to prevent such issues from actually destroying it, but issues with chargers absolutely can cause problems with the electronics inside a device.
Plus Amazon are even more of a hazard since you can't actually choose to buy legitimate goods. They mix everything together in the warehouse and ship you some random part picked out of the lucky dip. So no matter what you order or who you order it from, if any counterfeit copies are being sold by any other seller on the site, you might be shipped one of those counterfeits. I'd generally recommend not using Amazon at all for a variety of reasons, but if you're looking for electronics or anything else with potential safety issues, you really have to be a fool to consider buying from them.
"the control of the charging is in the phone not in the external charger."
OK so far. Now, who controls the quality of the cabling from the charger to the device, and what protection arrangements typically exist.
"Quality of cabling" may include any protective arrangements (streess relief etc) where the cable meets the connector, a well known stress point for many products, though probably more often laptops than phones.
We have just had the exact opposite!
A safety audit threw up the question "do these routers/switches that you are shipping out have lithium batteries?" "yes, but they are just button cells" "do the boxes carry UN safety labels?" "no, they are low capacity and exempt"
Looks like we now have a 'dangerous goods' bod, who is going through the stock control system and flagging half the items as 'dangerous to a limited extent' because, according to TPTB, a pallet of 'exempt' items now carries enough lithium to make them dangerous... despite us pointing out that the 5ft high pallets from Cisco, being delivered by air from China, have NO dangerous goods labels on the boxes, pallets or documentation ("but they're an American company and they might have different rules" "but the regulations are INTERNATIONAL and they have to abide by them")
According to their logic, an individual box is OK, a pallet is dangerous and needs labelling... but a quantity of boxes is fine!... so I guess, until they see sense, we will now be sending 'pallet loads' as a large quantity of individual boxes
Wow, I actually, finally registered.
In my own home, I have tried to keep lithium-ion batteries that are charged in my absence to a minimum. My bigger laptop is basically used as a living room, streaming PC, so no battery in there. My (totally useless) vacuuming robot was specifically purchased because it was one of the last ones with a NiMH- instead of a Li-Ion-battery. With electric cars and e-bikes becoming so commonplace, I really hope the new flame-supressing technologies in batteries that I sometimes read about will become required by law.
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