OT: Man killed by I-phone

[The Natural Philosopher]

From the the realms of 'you couldn't make it up'...

I-phone smothered in pillows overheats while on charge, catches fire, immobilised sufferer dies...

[Tim Watts]

Well, the phone is clearly faulty - they should have all sorts of overheating protection built into both the battery (definitely) and the phone (be surprised if it didn't).

However, keeping it *under* a pillow in any state but off is not good common sense - I tell my lot to only leave phones on hard surfaces if leaving unattended - there's a lot of energy in a lithium battery regardless of what it's doing.

[The Natural Philosopher]

How do you know?

I remember once years ago an item, of electronics that was in a totally sealed box overheated sand stopped working after 6 hours.

Yes, it took that long to get to about 100C inside.

drilling a pair of holes in the case completely cured it.

- they should have all sorts of

My point is why would it? consumer equipment is not built or tested to mil spec and a pillow is about the best insulator there is.

I've got a netbook that gets alrmainglly hot propped up on my knees pressed against a duvet. That is where teh cooling slots are. One of the things I checked my laptop for was 'no cooling slots underneath (and no loudspeakers there, either)

I bet all that happens is I-phones go out with a sticker 'do not leave switched in under a pillow'

As in the microwave labels 'not suitable for drying wet pets'

The more urgent problem is that the electrolyte is in solution with some powerful organic chemicals that contain enough oxygen to start a fire without air being involved.

[Andy Burns]

My 'home' netbook that gets used on settees and duvets is an Acer/Celeron that has no fan or cooling slots ... much more powerful than previous Dell/Atom (fanless but gutless and screen too small) and Lenovo/AMD (annoying fan and weak GPU for full screen video).

[Tim Watts]

Li batteries *must* have protection electronics as part of the pack.

And the makers of phones really have to assume people will do things like this - so I'd call that a basic design flaw if it's not just a one off fault.

cf laptops: On the odd occasion, my laptop fails to go into sleep mode properly when I close the lid and throw it in my rucksack with zero cooling. It gets hot and does an emergency shutdown - which is correct behaviour in the face of the first fault.

Nope - it's built for a market who are absolutely guaranteed to leave it on flammable materials, under cushions, bedding, packed in luggage.

It is a gross design flaw to ignore that.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No they mustn't. I've used dozens of unprotected packs.

Well I'd call the whole I-phone a basic design flaw, but since when has that ever made any difference to anything? It looks good, and it sells.

You seem to think that companies behave in responsible ways, and dont simply leave bad code and design in for years if it doesn't dent sales.

I assumed you were more worldly wise ....

[Tim Watts]

Strange - I thought all consumer batteries of this type had to include protection circuits in the pack?

Not necessarily the company but regulations pertaining...

Given the amount of crap *we* have to put up with, it never ceases to amaze me how core items of regulation seem to be missing from consumer goods...

[whisky-dave]

it can;t be a desgn flaw if it only happens 1 in 1000s if not 1,000,000 of products. It could be a flaw in the actual single product.

A friend was watching a 2 DVDs one after the other on a CRT iMac on the bed without the foot engadged because it had broken off a year before. So in imac manual they say NOT to cover the ventilation slots under the imac. They didnt; tell her not to but a blanket under it to actually eal the vents. So was it a design fault that it died and teh magic smoke came out of it. it was a chip on the disc drive that had actually cracked. I don;t have an iphone so I'm not sure if there's any precuastion that need to be taken into account. Such as dont;l site on it, or it contains nuts, or not to charge it while it's covered. A friend who has one was told by carephone warehouse that he shouldn;t leave it plugged in to the charger for more than two hours at a time, because they battery might explode. The only time I've heard of this happening is with non-apple chargers. I'm assuming in this case that a Apple charger was being used rather than one of those pound shop ones.

There's also a big diffence between a design flaw and a faulty or underspect component. Maybe I understand this better than most, I often get studetns asking me to end an item back because it doesn't work, but it's usually them connecting it up wrongly.

I doubt you could do that with any smartphone.

Only to a certain degree, so called common sense is assumed to exist in everyone.

Then lots of peolpe would experience this problem. You do know that it also flaw that car crash and catch fire.

Would you say that ferrari, mercs and lamborghini have a design flaw because perhaps people like to drive cars fast and the manufacturers should put a warning on them of or stop them going above 80 MPH.

[Chris Hogg]

^^^^^^^^^^^

ITYM exothermic

[The Natural Philosopher]

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yup. there's a thread from years back of someone who left a model aircraft pack on the passenger seat of a car in California.

No electrical connection yo anything.

Came back and the whole car was burnt out.

LI poly simply spontanieusly combust at around 100C or so.

[Tim Watts]

Indeed.

The big difference there is that the law requires you not to speed and

*everyone* has comprehensive training and an examination to ensure they don't do that. If they then do it is not out of ignorance.

How many people have training in handling things with dense energy cells and ventilation requirements? It is a whole different problem - and not a terribly hard one to solve.

[whisky-dave]

Those battereis are pouch format have and differnt charging and discharging characteristsc to iphone or laptop batteries.

[whisky-dave]

I don't think any of the drivers above were breaking the speed limit.

But these cars can go above 200MPH, so why do roads have speed limits ?

Until we realy know what happened we don't know whether it was a design fault or a component fault, or a manufacturing fault, or even a user fault as in brought a charger off the market to save money, then that would be a user fault.

[Tim Watts]

My vote is on a one off fault... Bad charges usually incinerate themselves) but it's not impossibly they might apply excess voltage to the device).

I was trying to repudiate "design fault" on the grounds these things generally have protection circuits...

[dennis]

My old Xperia z has stopped charging a few times when it decided it was too hot. It used to happen if I left the cover closed when I put it on the Qi plate. It was a bodged solution using the charger from a note 4 as the xperia isn't Qi natively. It was hot to the touch so it probably got to about 40C, nowhere near enough to do damage.

[dennis]

8<

You can be found guilty of manslaughter if you assume customers will use common sense to make your product safe.

Products should be safe under foreseeable conditions.

Suppose someone has an external battery pack that they plug into their mobile and then put them both in their handbag. Its easy to see them doing so and you should make it safe to do so.

This is why every phone I have had has thermal protection and stops charging if they get too hot. The battery pack should have similar protection.

I fully expect the iPhone to have such a mechanism or be recalled if it hasn't.

Wasn't the big Sony battery recall because the protection circuit wasn't protecting?

[The Natural Philosopher]

And that of course is where the whole thing becomes about as precise as an elastic ruler.

'Its obvias innit, I mean a mikro wave , so its a heater, and its right sized to dry off a pet rabbit, so I stuck it in, on LO, and it killed it'

Hah, we modellers want to see packs drained in less than 3 minutes of sparkling aerobatics. Or even shorter climbs to altitude for sailplanes.

100-200A is not uncommon for phone sized packs.

Protection? That's for safe sex, not for model plane batteries.

[whisky-dave]

Well that doesn't make much sense, so is pretty meaningless.

yes and provided the user follows the instructions.

Yes I have one of those and it's pretty safe. if I saw the battery in half it won't be safe.

well they'd sold over 200 million before this happened.

Yes a fault of sony not Apple same with disc drives. The company that was making them decided to change the specs without informing apple.

I never heard of lambagini pulling all their cars off production because someone drove to fast in teh rain, I'm pretty sure they still make cars that can go about 200 MPH and sell them to the public.

Are you sugegsting tehy should have a speed limiter to say 60MPH if teh road is wet. makes sense to me, in fact when a car 'sees' a speed limit why can;t it slow down itself ?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Well, quite. A tumble drier is much safer.