What you need to know
- A Reddit user posted a video of a swollen iPhone battery exploding in his face.
- The incident happened while he was trying to remove and replace the battery from the phone.
- Luckily he jumped just in time to avoid injuries, but it was definitely a close call.
- It shows the dangerous of swollen batteries and why Apple doesn't do them in its stores.
Apple does a lot of things in its store regarding repairs, but the one thing it doesn't do is replace swollen batteries. Now we know why. A video of a man replacing a swollen iPhone battery shows it exploding right in front of his face.
The video, posted on Reddit by the victim, shows two men in workshop removing batteries form device. One man is working on a battery inside an iPhone that got swollen while the other does something else. Obviously this makes the process truly difficult because during the removal process, it's almost too easy to accidentally puncture the battery and have it explode.
And that's exactly what happens in the video. The man in the yellow hat is doing his job and the iPhone bursts into flames, startling him as he falls down on the floor. He quickly comes to his senses and slaps the iPhone to the floor where he stomps out the flames.
Thankfully nothing serious happened, but it could have easily. Having a phone battery explode near your face is not something to joke around, More so, as one Reddit commentor pointed out, Lithium ion batteries burn at over 1,000℉, which means they can easily burn through the shoe the man stomped on the battery with. Luckily that didn't happen.
Lithium ion battery technology in itself is not a stable technology. That's why there's been so much trouble with batteries like the debacle of the Galaxy Note 7. This isn't a far-reaching iPhone battery, but more a one-off problem that happens with all lithium ion batteries. Nevertheless, it's still dangerous technology, especially when it swells up.
It goes to show why Apple doesn't allow in-store repair of swollen batteries for any of its products. They are just too dangerous and could seriously injure somebody.
