back to article Swiss cheesed off after Apple store iPhone does Samsung Galaxy Note 7 impersonation

In an inadvertent homage to Samsung's combustible Galaxy Note 7, an Apple iPhone battery overheated in an Apple Store in Zurich, Switzerland, on Tuesday morning, resulting in minor injury and prompting customers and employees to step outside while the smoke cleared. The Zurich City Police Department said it received a report …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    There we have it people, the first instance of computers gaining self awareness.

    1. getHandle

      "Where am I, what am I? Oh, I'm an iPhone! Noooo!! Goodbye cruel world!"

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Oh no, not again said the iPhone battery.

  2. Khaptain Silver badge

    Slightly sarcastic response coming up...

    "Lithium-ion batteries are notorious for occasional self-immolation."

    They are so notorious in fact that the last 29 mobiles devices that I possessed all self-immolated with 2 hours of purchasing and that was only the devices that I use to read ElReg.

    Cmon, "notorious" is a little bit OTT...

    There are currently over 1 Billion devices in use and we only very,very occasionally hear about self combusting batteries and we have little or no knowledge of the treatment that they might have suffered before hand.

    There are probably far more nefarious, notorius, extraneous household fires per day than mobiles burning gonads through self inflammation ....

    1. Sam Therapy

      Re: Slightly sarcastic response coming up...

      Yup. Whirlpool tumble dryers, for example.

    2. PhilipN Silver badge

      Heisenberg

      Agreed. 1 Billion devices is a lot of rogue molecules waiting to happen

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Does Elon Musk have any comment on the following exerpt ?

    "...lithium-ion batteries degrade over time, making them incapable of meeting processor power requirements during periods of peak demand."

    For how many cycles or months does the Ludicrous Mode remain fully functional?

    I expect that this is well defined, somewhere.

    1. Wulfhaven

      Re: Does Elon Musk have any comment on the following exerpt ?

      That is probably why the Teslas all go into limited performance mode after a stretch of taxing use of batteries.

  4. Spanners Silver badge
    Megaphone

    Apple did not respond to a request for comment. ®

    "WTF do you think you are asking us questions?!?"

    That could be a national government or a right-wing thinktank.

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: Apple did not respond to a request for comment. ®

      So, business as usual... Nice to know though, in these interesting times to be alive, that there still are some things one can rely on.

  5. Milton

    Note to the literate ...

    "Explode" is not the same thing as "catches fire".

    If you've *ever* been near anything that actually exploded, you'd know the difference.

    Instead of earnestly scrawling "explode" in every story about lithium batteries sometimes combusting, you could go for the "my readers might actually be adults" style of journalism. Go on, give it a try ... who knows, you might grow up too.

  6. ThatOne Silver badge
    WTF?

    > sustained minor burns while removing a smoldering battery from a device

    Do iPhones have removable batteries???

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Sure! In about the same way that you have a removable heart.

    2. PNGuinn
      Mushroom

      Do iPhones have removable batteries???

      Only if they become self aware and remove them themselves.

      "Where am I? What am I? I seem to be an iThingie ..."

      "I'm so depressed" ...

      "I've got such a pain in the cells down my right hand side ... "

      ......

      1. Ellipsis
        Terminator

        Re: Do iPhones have removable batteries???

        “I require a cutting tool”

    3. Cynicalmark

      What was he doing? Probably saying “look at this fellow genius” while shorting the battery out.

      Not bright

      Not genius

      They should be called Apple Muppets.

      I’m off to take my pills the nice white coated lady gave me.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No one else picked up on this?

    So they just happened to have some quartz sand in a bucket ready and knew how to get the case off fast enough to get the battery out without major harm?

    1. alex cee

      Re: No one else picked up on this?

      No I raised an eyebrow at that. While I'm glad it potentially stopped further damage and harm to people, It does suggest some sort of training or preparation has been done for this kind of event.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: No one else picked up on this?

        this was in Switzerland - home of efficiency in most things, so no doubt a major store’s fire security would be covering all likely bases.

      2. keylevel Silver badge

        It does suggest some sort of training or preparation

        Quite.

        All it takes is one small slip that results in a puncture of the cell, short-circuit, etc. and you have lots of smoke and/or a fire to deal with.

        Any service center that's replacing lithium cells should have this covered by their risk assessment and have mitigation strategies in place.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: It does suggest some sort of training or preparation

          If they wouldn't using that miserable "I won't ever let go!" tape to hold the batteries in the case then maybe you wouldn't have to use a crowbar to remove the old battery. And yes, I can almost guarantee they punctured the battery (or bent the shit out of it) trying to separate from that fucking tape. Been there, done that.

          1. Slap

            Re: It does suggest some sort of training or preparation

            No need to use a crowbar, at least on iPhone 6 and above models.

            The battery is indeed held in place by 2 strips of “never let go” adhesive, However each strip has a tab which you pull. As you pull it you draw out a length of thin plastic, and as you do this it seperates the adhesive from the case.

            Once these tabs are fully removed then you can just lift the battery out no problem.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: It does suggest some sort of training or preparation

              Yeah, and on the three iPhone 5s phones where I've swapped batteries, the "pull tab" tore off before the adhesive was even a quarter removed. Didn't matter how careful I was or what angle I tried, it simply couldn't overcome that damned adhesive.

        2. kain preacher

          Re: It does suggest some sort of training or preparation

          Key word is should. I but lots of places do not

    2. Slap

      Re: No one else picked up on this?

      Quarz sand is pretty much the most common form of sand - nothing special, and yes, if you go through the Apple safety training this is one of the essential things to have on hand to use in just this type of event.

      As the phone itself was under service at the time, meaning the case was already off, then my personal take on this is that the most likely cause was an errant screwdriver puncturing a relatively highly charged battery rather than the battery itself being in an unstable condition. Some of the torx bits used when servicing iPhones are really small and sharp, and will puncture an unprotected battery with no problem.

    3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: No one else picked up on this?

      "So they just happened to have some quartz sand in a bucket"

      It's the easiest sort of sand to buy. I'd guess the Swiss have regulations about having fire-fighting equipment in business premisses.

      1. Ellipsis
        Flame

        Re: No one else picked up on this?

        I assume they do, though perhaps not always what you might expect.

        Our office fire extinguisher is halon, and lives in a cupboard whose door has no handle…

  8. Dwarf

    Engineers

    I bet the “Repair Engineer” got a bit over excited with his screwdriver when removing the battery, after all the sales droid wouldn’t know how to open the case.

    The sand is probably there due to some H&S review for when things go wrong.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It was an Iphone 6 plus

    According to all Swiss news that I checked, it was an Iphone 6 plus and it happened when they was trying to exchange the battery. Don't know from where the register has the information that it was a Samsung device. Since when does an Apple store fix Samsung devices?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It was an Iphone 6 plus

      The headline contains a joke comparison between this incident and the notoriously combustible Samsung Note 7.

  10. Tigra 07
    Thumb Up

    It's not a bug, it's the iPhone's new IWarm heating system. In just 5 seconds it can raise the temperature of the user to 600 decrees Celcius.

    1. Naselus

      Game changer!

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. kain preacher

      TIgra 07

      TIgra 07 you are off

      by a factor a of 1.55. It should be 935c :)

  11. Korev Silver badge
    Coat

    Puns?

    I'm disappointed with the lack of cheesy puns under this story...

    1. onefang

      Re: Puns?

      "I'm disappointed with the lack of cheesy puns under this story..."

      So you are cheesed off?

      I think this story is full of holes.

      I know, I'm late to this party, but I did bring a cheese platter.

  12. Pat Harkin

    How common IS this problem?

    The Samsung 7 got a dreadful reputation but I never saw an authoritative statement of how many went up and how common this was compared to other brands and models.

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