Man says iOS 12.1 caused his iPhone X to explode, Apple says this is "not expected" behavior

[midian182]

What just happened? Following the Note 7 disaster, Samsung will forever be associated with exploding phones, but it isn’t the only company whose handsets have been known to go up in smoke. An iPhone X is alleged to have “got hot and exploded” after its user installed the iOS 12.1 update.

Rahel Mohamad, a resident of Federal Way, Washington, owns the device in question. He claims his 10-month old Apple handset "just go hot and exploded in the process of upgrading to [iOS 12.1]."

Speaking to Gadgets 360, Mohamad said the iPhone X was in the process of being updated to iOS 12.1 when he started charging it. Following the completion of the update, he says the phone started to “smoke and caught fire” as soon as it turned on.

Mohamad adds that he used the bundled Lightning cable and wall adaptor, and that he’d stopped charging the phone before the “explosion” took place. “When I held the phone it was very hot, and I drop the phone immediately. Then it started to smoke,” he told the publication.

That's definitely not expected behavior. DM us, so we can look into this with you: https://t.co/GDrqU22YpT

— Apple Support (@AppleSupport) 14 November 2018

Mohamad reached out to Apple via Twitter and included some photos of the damaged device. The company’s support team replied that it was “definitely not expected behavior,” which seems like they’re pointing out the obvious. He says Apple has asked him to send in the iPhone X so it can investigate the matter.

Assuming this is real, Apple’s unlikely to be worried. There have been plenty of other reports of exploding phones, some of which involved Apple handsets, but they’ve all been isolated incidents.

Main image credit: @rocky_mohamad

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/77441-man-ios-121-caused-iphone-x-explode-apple.html

 

[Uncle Al]

So, they didn't argue the point but they did fail to call it an "undocumented feature" ..... eh? Hope he had the phone in shirt pocket with the screen facing away from his body!

 

[DelJo63]

Come on now, it's a hardware issue, not software. Even running extreme graphics pushing a GPU would not generate sufficient heat to destroy the device.

Oh, I forgot; "it's on the Internet so it must be true".

 

[Per Hansson]

Obviously he was holding it wrong, you're not supposed to drop it!
“When I held the phone it was very hot, and I drop the phone immediately. Then it started to smoke,”

 

[mrjgriffin]

Come on now, it's a hardware issue, not software. Even running extreme graphics pushing a GPU would not generate sufficient heat to destroy the device.

Oh, I forgot; "it's on the Internet so it must be true".

software is the reason hardware works and how it works. so yea, it could totally be software considering this happened during a software update thats modifying the actual hardware and also because his phone was fine for 10 months. you've never heard of software patches or driver updates that fix heat issues? which brings me to another point of your post, stating the gpu can never cause this basically. apparently you've never seen a graphics driver that's been known to overheat nvidia/amd gpus. it's happened before and hotfix drivers have been released countless times to fix issues like this.

perhaps you've no idea what you're talking about.

 

[p51d007]

If people understood they are carrying a stick of dynamite in their pocket, it might freak them out.
The spacer for the anode-cathode for batteries like these are very temperamental. A little bend here
or a bend there and they get nasty in a hurry.
Since he was charging it, couple thing could of happened. Within the cells, they have thermistors that
detect the heat around the battery cells. If it gets too hot, it signals the charger to interrupt the current
flow to the battery. If that were to fail, they typically have a thermal fuse, that is suppose to melt, if the
temperature reaches a certain level, interrupting the current flow.
Either the thermistor and or thermal fuse circuit failed, or there was a defect inside the cell, allowing the
anode/cathode to get together.

 

[DelJo63]

perhaps you've no idea what you're talking about.

perhaps you've never built any electronic devices.

 

[senketsu]

When my android phone does a major update, I am warned the phone may get warm.
when I charge the phone, it gets quite warm.
Both together, what could go wrong?

 

[Bubbajim]

"Just in time for the cold winter months, Apple™ is happy to announce iFire™, the world's most advanced hand warmer, the hottest new revolutionary tech from the pioneers of personal devices."

 

[DelJo63]

I'm always concerned with OEM chargers. When in Reno for the Air Races, my friend discovered he forgot to pack his, so we went shopping and found two choices; a 1AMP and a 2AMP. The latter would be a good quick charger, but also risks addition heat during charging -- we opted for the 1AMP