There we have it people, the first instance of computers gaining self awareness.
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 …
COMMENTS
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 21:30 GMT Khaptain
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 ....
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 21:34 GMT 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.
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 23:15 GMT 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.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 10:15 GMT keylevel
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.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 13:10 GMT 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.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 17:16 GMT 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.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 20:17 GMT 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.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 08:03 GMT 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.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 08:27 GMT 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?
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