Warning: Graphic images.
Posted by Gareth Clear on Friday, May 27, 2016
Thought your iPhone was safe? You may want to think again.
Gareth Clear, 36, was cycling through Manly Dam, near Sydney on Sunday afternoon when his foot missed the pedal and he came off his bike.
He got up with only a few grazes as the fall was minor, but noticed smoke coming from his leg. His iPhone had exploded – and the injuries because of it are gruesome.
The phone burnt through Gareth’s pocket, melting his shorts, itself, and two layers of skin on his upper right thigh.
He told the Sydney Morning Herald:
I just saw smoke coming out of my back pocket…and then all of a sudden I felt this surging pain.
I just remember looking at my leg and I had this black discharge all down my leg and this smell of phosphorus.
Clear said he posted a picture of his injury on his Twitter account, and received a ‘mechanical’ response from Apple before an employee tried to call him.
While injuries from mobile phone batteries are extremely rare, each year, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission routinely receives around one to two reports, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
An ACCC spokesman investigating the incident said:
The decreasing size and slimness of portable devices coupled with consumer expectations about battery life are a challenge for battery manufacturers.
Lithium batteries are vulnerable to significant physical impact, [which] may damage the extremely thin separators that keep the elements of the battery apart.
Despite him needing a skin graft, though, Clear said he did not blame Apple for his injury, and wanted to raise awareness about the potential dangers of iPhones.
He added:
The more pervasive these are in our lives and the more people use them with a lack of apprehension that something might go wrong, the more that these things will happen.
Well, that’s the last time I take my phone cycling with me.
