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Botched Repair Likely Cause of Combusting iPhone After Flight

Posted by Soulskill on from the you're-probably-just-puncturing-the-battery-wrong dept.

aesoteric writes "The combustion of an Apple iPhone 4 after a regional flight in Australia was likely caused by a botched repair of the handset by an unauthorized repairer, according to air safety investigators in the U.S. and Australia. A small metal screw had been misplaced in the battery bay of the handset. The screw punctured the battery casing and caused an internal short circuit, making the iPhone emit dense smoke (PDF)."

10 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Waiting for facts by Overly+Critical+Guy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    After reading the snarky comments in the previous story about "holding it wrong", "it's an iPhone so it's a feature", and "ban all phones without removable batteries", it's interesting to see what happens if you wait for investigative facts to come out. But where would be the fun in that? Slashdot's comment section is more about cathartic bashing than insightful commentary. Of course, now we'll see accusations that Apple bribed the ATSB or fake-posts from pretend-battery-engineers telling us how the story is wrong or some other similar silliness...

    --
    "Sufferin' succotash."
    1. Re:Waiting for facts by ZeroSumHappiness · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not to mention that someone fruity could lobby for laws that outlaw third party repairs as a result...

    2. Re:Waiting for facts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Seems to vindicate the "ban all phones without removable batteries" position, though. If the batteries were designed to be replaced by the end user, this wouldn't have happened.

    3. Re:Waiting for facts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      "To the rest of us, including non-devotees who have an apple product, it's still pretty funny."

      The only reason you think it's funny is because you are stupid and thus easily
      amused, even by old jokes.

      Old jokes are stale. Old jokes are no longer funny because they are old and they've been
      heard before. Standup comics know this, that's why they pay well for new material.

    4. Re:Waiting for facts by msauve · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The repair was for a broken screen, not a battery replacement. Your claim is a non-sequitur.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    5. Re:Waiting for facts by m.ducharme · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Just to add a counter-factual point to your anecdote, I recall some time ago being in the market for a music player. the iPods at the time were white, second or third gen I guess, and of course the non-replaceable battery issue was as live then as it seems to be now. So I shopped around, and bought an iRiver. nice player, good capacity, user-serviceable battery.

      3 years or so later, when the time came around to replace the battery, I went online to order a replacement only to find that the battery I needed, with a specific shape and plug, had been discontinued, and there was no way I could get a new one, branded or after-market.

      Since then, I haven't been fussed about the non-replaceable battery issue, really.

      --
      Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
    6. Re:Waiting for facts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why wait for a law?

      There are several federal agencies that can make something effectively illegal simply by editing a list, and publishing it. We had to amend the constitution of make alcohol illegal, but drugs float from schedule to schedule at the whim of the FDA. The ATF, does the same thing. Neither offer, nor will when asked, a shred of evidence behind their reasoning.

  2. How do they know it's 'unauthorized'? by gelfling · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I wonder, and so what?

  3. First rule of any tech repair by macraig · · Score: 5, Insightful

    First rule of any tech repair, 'authorized' or not:

    1. Always have a method to account for every screw and part removed!

    I'm not authorized to service my own laptops, one of them has been disassembled literally dozens of times, and yet this scenario is very unlikely to happen to me. I have sets of interlocking parts compartments that I have labelled specifically for teardowns of each laptop; the screws are grouped by progressive steps or layers of the teardown, and further by size in some instances. This is critical even for someone performing the same teardown every day, as no one is perfect, but it's especially critical for those first or one-time teardowns.

    This screw got misplaced not because the guy was 'unauthorized' but rather because he was careless and foolish. Just because a person is indeed authorized (or degreed) is no exemption from carelessness and foolishness.

    1. Re:First rule of any tech repair by sexconker · · Score: 3, Insightful

      First rule of any tech repair, 'authorized' or not:

      1. Always have a method to account for every screw and part removed!

      I'm not authorized to service my own laptops, one of them has been disassembled literally dozens of times, and yet this scenario is very unlikely to happen to me. I have sets of interlocking parts compartments that I have labelled specifically for teardowns of each laptop; the screws are grouped by progressive steps or layers of the teardown, and further by size in some instances. This is critical even for someone performing the same teardown every day, as no one is perfect, but it's especially critical for those first or one-time teardowns.

      This screw got misplaced not because the guy was 'unauthorized' but rather because he was careless and foolish. Just because a person is indeed authorized (or degreed) is no exemption from carelessness and foolishness.

      Little plastic compartments?
      In my day we used an egg carton.