Apple takes heat after latest iPhone blow-up
An iPhone user escaped unscathed when her phone exploded as she slept - the third such case reported in Hong Kong this year.
Joanne Shum Chung-yan, a teacher, woke up on Friday to find her iPhone 3GS, which she has owned for more than three years, cracked in two. She had left it to charge overnight.
'The explosion resulting from a normal recharging procedure is totally unacceptable,' said Shum, who bought the phone from an official 3 shop and was using a genuine Apple charger. 'I could have been disfigured if I had been holding the phone by my face when it burst.'
The phone, which Shum showed to the South China Morning Post, was left with wires exposed and parts of its external plastic casing had melted. A corner of the shell was blackened apparently due to the heat, and the front and back plates had partly detached.
Shum was further angered to learn that Apple had changed its policy and would no longer repair products on which the warranty has run out.
'I could not deal directly with Apple's authorised technical support centre when I approached it. They said they wouldn't handle my case as my warranty had ended. Therefore, I had to go back to where I bought it to arrange for an inspection,' she said.
Staff at the 3 shop directed her to a technical assistance line for Apple, where a 'senior adviser' told her the phone would have to undergo an examination which might involve taking the product apart so she could receive a quote for repair.
'Obviously, he totally omitted the fact that I did not break the phone; it exploded by itself,' Shum said.
She also said the Apple adviser told her that a report could be compiled based on her case, 'but that [it] would be confidential and for internal use only'.
Shum contends that Apple should have done more to inform customers of the change of policy. She said 3 staff told her that 'Apple couldn't handle so many repairs after having sold so many products'. She has since decided to report the case to the Consumer Council.
An Apple public relations officer would not comment on an individual case, but asked the Post to forward details about the complaint, with the complainant's consent.
She also pointed out Apple's warranty regulations - a set of more than 200 pages of legal documents - but declined to say how they related to Shum's case unless Shum provided further information.
Earlier this month another case of damage to a Hong Kong user's iPhone 3GS was reported, in which the exterior shell cracked and the battery inside expanded like a balloon. A similar case involving an iPhone 3GS was reported earlier this year.
A woman in the US state of Colorado reportedly woke up this month to a smoking, sizzling iPhone 4 next to her hotel bed, according to technology website CNET. It appears to have been the first time an iPhone has blown up in the United States. The circumstances were similar to Shum's in that it involved a phone charging at night.
According to Dr Peter Chiu Ping-kuen, an electronics and engineering expert, there are several possible explanations for such incidents. Parts could have come loose after a phone was dropped, or there could have been a problem with the battery's quality. Chiu said he would have to examine a phone to be certain.
