A man was severely burned when his iPhone exploded after a minor fall on his bike, The Sydney Morning Herald reports. Gareth Clear said the phone was in his back pocket when he took a tumble off his bike, then burst into flames when he fell on top of it.
“I just saw smoke coming out of my back pocket…and then all of a sudden I felt this surging pain,” he said. “I just remember looking at my leg and I had this black discharge all down my leg and this smell of phosphorus.” Gareth sustained third-degree burns to his leg that required a skin graft.
Apple hasn’t commented on the incident, but a spokesman for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said they receive one or two reports of injuries related to mobile phone batteries each year.
“Lithium batteries are vulnerable to significant physical impact, [which] may damage the extremely thin separators that keep the elements of the battery apart,” the spokesman said, adding that the ACCC recommends not storing phones in a pocket during activities where there is a chance such an impact could occur. Injuries from iPhone batteries are uncommon but not unheard of.
