Apple says it's not to blame for 'exploding' iPhones
Apple's iPhone may be the darling of the mobile-phone industry right now, but some users in France aren't singing its praises, claiming that the device explodes or cracks without warning.
(Credit:
Apple)
However, after conducting an internal investigation into the cause of the broken touch-screen glass, Apple denies that there is an underlying iPhone flaw. In fact, Apple said that in all cases it investigated, some kind of force was applied to the iPhone, causing the glass to break, according to a BBC report Friday.
"The iPhones with broken glass that we have analyzed to date show that in all cases, the glass cracked due to an external force that was applied to the iPhone," Apple said in a statement cited by the BBC.
Last Tuesday, in response to a European Commission investigation into accusations of overheating and exploding iPhones, Apple referred to its internal investigation, saying, "We are waiting to receive the iPhones from the customers."
As part of its investigation, Apple also looked into complaints of the iPhone battery overheating but again said it found no problems. "To date, there are no confirmed battery-overheating incidents for iPhone 3GS, and the number of reports we are investigating is in the single digits," according to the statement.
The investigation's findings don't mean much to France's Frank Benoiton, a consumer who said his wife's iPhone cracked, and it "was not dropped and experienced no unusual shock," he told the Associated Press.
France's trade minister declined to comment on a meeting with Apple about an investigation that the country's consumer protection agency is conducting into the reports, according to Bloomberg.
The European Commission also issued a warning using its rapid-alert system, Rapex, which warns of dangerous consumer products.
Jim Dalrymple has followed Apple and the Mac industry for the last 15 years, first as part of MacCentral and then in various positions at Macworld. A guitar player for 20 years, Jim also writes about the professional audio market, examining the best ways to write and record songs on a Macintosh with Logic Pro and Pro Tools. Jim is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
Ignorance indeed!
Neither a "company" or a woman
Not that this couldn't be user error, but look into Apple's history of covering things up. They take your phone, do their tests, and then let no third party analyze the phone. Apple could say unicorns and fairies broke the phone and no one could have any proof otherwise. Admittedly it is odd that these seem to be isolated events, but I'd like to see someone else do the tests. We don't let car manufacturers certify their own products for safety, why do we trust Apple?
Exactly!
do universal adapters fix this kind of thing or no?
reminds me of that one old commercial where someone demonstrates the utility of a cellphone in self defense
iPod, initiate self destruct mode.
or
iPod, start App: grendae
As for the exploding part steve jobs is a part of al qaeda no he is osama bin laden in disguise and he is planning on taking over the nations overpriced cell phones cutting service to twitter and then because the feds don't take your iphones away when you get on planes he is going to use them to injure flight attendants and cut us with broken screen glass (but only on flights going to or connecting in france monday through friday 9am-5pm excluding major holidays other terms apply) haha what a perfect plan that will show us americans who is boss... or not ;)
In regards to things that are broken, when you are "u" getting your keyboard repaired?
Yea, you know it all, don't you? Apparently, you don't know jack about mass-manufacturing in general. It's technically and physically impossible to manufacture thousands or in this case millions of any kind of product without some defective units. Apple certainly has their share of defective ones like everyone else, yet their percentages are one of the lowest in the industry. And in such a case, a product with manufacturing defect will be replaced, no questions asked.
How do I know? I used to work at the Genius bar and have seem my share of actual defective and supposedly "defective" products trying to be returned. Let's just say, there are some really dumb customers out there that don't know how to handle an electronic product or probably any kind of product for that matter.
And no, glass doesn't just break without external force being applied to it.
And no, none of the batteries have exploded as the investigation has revealed. Would be pretty obvious if they did...
And no, it cannot just be a "bad" batch of products in France. One batch/shipment is distributed into multiple countries in Europe. For some reason only in France are those "exploding iPhones" appearing...
But sure, it's always Apple's fault. Wouldn't wanna blame (someone else) for breaking their "precious" device, right?
[CNET editor's note: Offensive language deleted.]
Then you must not have seen hot glass crack on its own. Lends more credence to the theory that the battery overheated and cracked the glass too.
You overextended yourself there and sounded a bit silly. Still, I think most people agree with the overall sentiment - that you should expect a few mistakes in any mass production.
"Here's how you get free beer, eh."
Anyway, this sounds similar to the people claiming that they had overheating iphones in the USA that caused the white case to discolor. Apple investigated and found these people had third party cases that were insulating the phone, making them feel hot, and the cases were also poorly dyed, so the color would transfer to the phone under heat. Removing the case and cleaning the phone restored it to white, and leaving the case off kept it cooler.
I don't put my iPhone in any case, and it never gets hot.
And Microsoft isn't greedy at all...
I'm not an Apple fanboy, but your comments just ooze ignorance.
I hate to break it to you, but most companies only care about money (gasp!?), which would technically define them as being greedy.
@twistatech
Thanks for the information. I did not know that tempered glass could spontaneously shatter.
i agree,ms is greedy too,but i think apple is worst,thats all,imagine if microsoft would start selling pc's,picked few hardware components , wrote drivers for them and told the rest to go away.apple is just The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle of computers ,bunch of phonies with bunch of **** followers"
You mean like what Microsoft does with the Xbox 360 ad Zune. I am not saying it's right or wrong, but once again, you need keep your facts straight. Your ignorance is really showing right now. That is the way a lot of companies operate. Look it up.
pls tell me how ur post fits N w/ dis topic.
Feh. **Heads straight for the bathroom to scrub his hands down with peroxide, acetone, and PURE BLEACH for the grammar based crimes against humanity he just commited.**
And who says windows isnt 64bit or that OSX isnt finally 64bit bit with Snow Leopard? Get out of the unix cave.
You knowns, chinese are still commies ;-)
Apple is 110% innocent.
You are aware that the cost of a phone that has 100% quality control would be about 10-100x the cost of an iPhone, no? Why do NASA projects cost so much? Because they try for 100% reliability, which is expensive, and they STILL routinely fail.
Finally someone with some common sence. Defects happen. Doesen't anyone remember the whole Lenovo fiasco with IBM few years ago?
Or any other defects? This stuff is made by humans, therefore it will always be imperfect.
- by blafouille August 30, 2009 8:24 AM PDT
- hello can you hear me....Kaboum....!
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