back to article Exploding iPhone total rises as Oz officials probe alleged fakes

Yesterday, it was eight. Now the total of iPhones that have allegedly exploded - or at last suffered a catastrophic cracking of the screen - has risen to 11. The new tally comes from French newspaper Nouvel Observateur which has listed many of them. This week, France's consumer affairs agency, the DGCCRF (Direction Générale …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Evil Auditor Silver badge
    Grenade

    Burning cars was yesterday.

    "Outside France there have been only a few incidents of alleged self-harming iPhones"

    Today, they let explode their phones. Since I haven't got an iPhone is it now safer to travel to France by car?

    EA

  2. Grease Monkey Silver badge
    WTF?

    WTF?

    Take any electronic device that has sold that many units and I bet you'll find at least as many "catastrophic" failures, so why is this news?

  3. E_Nigma
    Paris Hilton

    I Really Doubt that This Is Relevant

    Unless someone is dumb as well as blind enough (for sheer stupidity is not enough in this case) to believe that a device that apparently costs less than €10 to make is a real iPhone, I doubt that any potential subsequent spontaneous combustion of such a device would end up attributed to Apple hardware.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Halo

    What?!

    The same screen? The same software? The same, in essence, experience, and for just Au$18.50 ($15.37/£9.48/€10.78)..Tell me this can't be true...Or where can i get one? :D

  5. eJ2095

    Ahh u mean these

    http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.23047

    Friend had one it last about a year to be fair and finaley died a death

  6. Adam C 1
    Alert

    Fake iPhones?! What a load of rubbish

    Sneaking them into the country? Er.. a quick check on eBay see's these phones available worldwide for £40ish. The way the article you linked to worded it, they were a 'new phenomenon'.. They've been around for ages and they're shite! The screens are inferior, low-res, and the software is written in chinglish. They're hardly a 'convincing clone'!

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Pick your side now

    iPhone - Pah, Overpriced, over-hyped crap. I've never used one and just know what I've heard from a mate of a mate of my uncles nephew who looked at one in the 02 store for 30 seconds, I still wouldnt have one if they were only a tenner.

    Look, there are 10 Million sold, 15 cases of this happening. A failure rate of 0.00015 is better than Nokia could ever manage. I bet they find that those 15 are fakes so there is a 0% failure rate!

  8. Frank Bough
    Thumb Down

    so...

    you've less than a ONE IN A MILLION chance of your iPhone 'exploding'?

  9. Paul 131
    FAIL

    Re: Pick your side now

    You set a new benchmark in loserness young man.

  10. E_Nigma

    @Pick your side now AC

    No, it's a 0.00015% spontaneous combustion rate, the failure rate is several orders of magnitude higher and sits in the same ballpark with the corresponding statistics for other modern smartphones.

    P.S. I'm not picking sides, only fanboys (and probably hateboys) tend to turn the matter of who owns a certain object into an "us and them" sort of situation.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    so 1 in a million

    lets hope it's not your eye that gets hit with shards of exploding glass (as the French guy got) - I mean , what are the chances of that happening. Oh yeah, a million to one !!!

    Never heard of a single Nokia exploding by itself though.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nokia 5800

    Nokia sell 1M 5800s per month. Never heard of a single one exploding. Nokia have probably sold about 5m so far.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Real Fakes

    Or are they the refurbed millions from Wal Mart?

  14. Paul Schofield
    Coat

    But done Million to One chances

    Happen 9 times out of 10???

  15. Stevie

    Bah!

    [4 Grease Monkey] Never heard of a beeper exploding or catching fire.

    Or a transistor radio.

    Or an electronic keyboard (Casio, Yamaha, Roland, Korg etc).

    Or a camcorder.

    Or a point and shoot camera (Nikon, Kodak, Canon, Olympus etc).

    Or a digital watch.

    Or a set of solar powered garden landscape lamps.

    Or a walkman.

    Or one of those squawking wand things they wave over you at airports these days.

    I'd have to experss scepticism about your "catastrophic failure" assertion based on this.

  16. MadonnaC
    Joke

    @Frank Bough

    But we all know - 1 in a millin chances happen 9 times out of 10

  17. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Fake iPhones don't have glass screens

    Can someone confirm whether the fake iPhones have glass screens?

    If they don't have glass screens then surely they are not fake.

    I would consider one of these fakes if I could get the source code to re-program it to do what I want.

    For now, I have the genuine article, and have experienced the phone getting hotter than any other phones I've had, but not as hot as some of the laptops I've had. I could still hold the phone, but it was VERY hot.

  18. Adrian Esdaile
    Badgers

    Fake iphones?

    You would have to be either very, very drunk or a very very stupid backpacker to mistake a knock-off for a real iphone.

    Or to buy one in a pub for that matter. Still, if you want to rip off very stupid people, I guess Australia's your mark.

  19. Winkypop Silver badge
    Flame

    @Adrian Esdaile

    Yes very stupid.

    Most pubs near backpacker hostels are swarming with unwashed Pommies!

  20. Franklin
    Stop

    Just this very morning...

    ...I got a piece of spam in my inbox advertising iPods for $40 each and iPhone 3GSes for $99 each.

    The same email offered me BlackBerry Storms for $100 each, PlayStation 3s for $64 each, and Abercrombie & Fitch polo shirts for $9.17 each.

    You mean there are fake goods floating around? Seriously? Shocked, I am. Shocked, at the very suggestion!

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like