Slashdot Mirror


iPhone Auto-Combusts On Australian Airplane

First time accepted submitter thegreymonkey writes "Last Friday, an iPhone caught fire on flight ZL319 operating from Lismore to Sydney. This incident is under investigation from Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA). This accident might be related to the iPhone battery again." Whether it "caught fire" may be a matter of semantics; as reported in the above linked story and by Network World (hat tip to reader alphadogg), though, the iPhone "started glowing red and emitting dense smoke."

7 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Now we know why phones must be off on planes by Pi1grim · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Who said it was? To prevent things like this you have to take the battery out. Oh, wait

  2. Re:From XKCD to life?? by AvitarX · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One hand gernade is less than a 20oz soda, high explosives aren't calorically dense, they are good at release.

    You may as well say a gram of anything has huge amounts of energy (E=mc^2), extracting it is left as a thought excersize.

    --
    Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
  3. Re:From XKCD to life?? by omglolbah · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually, the standard "Do not use water with electrical fires" is based on the danger of electrocution.
    'Throwing' water on something would work fine as there is no stream connecting you to the electrified component.

    In battery-powered systems this is usually not a concern and water is a fine medium to put it out with ;)

    Hell, in any modern house the GFCI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residual-current_device) should trip long before you're in any danger of serious damage. More likely than not the power has already tripped if there is an electrical fire, or it will trip the instant the stream of water causes leakage current from the burning piece of hardware.

    High voltage is of course a completely different scenario, luckily one most wont have to deal with... Like a water cooling system next to a 132kV transformer... ugh...

  4. Re:From XKCD to life?? by Khyber · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "In battery-powered systems this is usually not a concern and water is a fine medium to put it out with ;)"

    Not by any means are you correct. Battery fires are classified as metal fires, and require a class-d extinguisher.

    You try putting out a lithium fire by throwing water on it - I dare you.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  5. Re:Car DVD PLayer by scharkalvin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That would probably have been an exploded electrolytic capacitor. The small ones inside low power devices usually just blow their tops which are scored to act as a safety valve. The larger type capacitors can literally blow up like an M80 firecracker. I've seen photos of TV sets that had a hole blown in the side of the cabinet by a capacitor going "bomb".

  6. Re:Blame game by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If the battery manufacturer screwed the pooch, its Apple's fault?

    They would be accountable, yes.

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  7. Inconceivable! by DragonHawk · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Any power adapter should be able to survive a complete short on the output if it is designed properly.

    And as we all know, the consumer electronics market is known for its high quality and attention to detail in their designs and build quality. ;-)

    --

    dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
    I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.