iPhone 3gs exploding expanding battery

Just to note as I didn't mention it in my previous post, my wife stopped using the phone for a few months and it was sat in a drawer. Then about a week ago she decided to use it again and charged it up. The battery didn't start expanding till a few days later after charging however.

superjaz1 wrote:

Just to note as I didn't mention it in my previous post, my wife stopped using the phone for a few months and it was sat in a drawer. Then about a week ago she decided to use it again and charged it up. The battery didn't start expanding till a few days later after charging however.

That is significant. Leaving it unused that long without charging it will allow the battery to drain completely. Complete discharge is a death warrant for Lithium chemistry batteries, as it is for most other secondary batteries. (If you did the same with your car battery you would get the same results.) When the phone shuts off due to low battery under normal use there is still plenty of charge left in the battery; it shuts off early to protect the battery from total discharge. But leaving it uncharged after it shuts off will eventually drain it completely, as a few functions of the phone continue to operate (primarily maintaining RAM memory).

Another one bites the dust... Same thing happened to my iPhone 3GS. Didn't realise it was a battery problem until my uncle posted a pic of his phone.. and then thought.. "uuuhhh.. that happened to mine too!" That's when I realised. It's crazy. Am going to contact Apple tomorrow when I have the phone with me to make a complaint.. and somehow resolve this. I was only looking for my iPhone to loan someone as a spare phone.. and then saw it.. It wasn't plugged in or anything at the time..

went to Apple store (in the UK) - showed popped up phone - and got a replacement phone within days for £55 (the fee for replacement battery). Its a pain as the data is lost but at least I now have again a working phone.

It seems that Apple has already removed and filtered some postings here already, people this is not supposed to happen! LION batteries dont just expand after a few years, there is a production problem here I am sure and it seems a large amount of these are failing. I have LION batteries that are much older than the 3GS and work well still, if everyone can write down all the numbers off the battery that has failed then we can start a list the model and batch numbers, it might show a pattern, there is a batch of numbers on the top and a long number on the very bottom of each battery, lets see if there is a pattern. Stop paying for a replacement phone, Apple should replace this, remember the Ipod Nano first generation battery recall.....

Since Apple said that I was ranting I am going to try to re-post doing my own editing.

I had commented in the post removed by Apple that there are some people here who seem to post "their opinions" which seem to concentrate on minimizing our frustration. To me their opinion is irrelevant because I don't think any of them have experienced this incident and our frustration first hand. It doesn't take a genius to know and understand that batteries fail. We all know that batteries like anything else, have a life-cycle. Their postings pretend to be from subject matter experts point of view, who appear to have written the book on Li-Ion batteries technology. Therefore our frustrations are ridiculous. I wonder why their inflammatory posts are allowed to stay? One of them recently replied mockingly: "I bet you are now backing up the phone."

I ask you, how is this in any way constructive support advise? If it were once i can understand, but most of these comments have a very condescending tone which basically state the obvious but seem to be intended through sarcasm to make us feel like dummies.

I think, like many of you, after spending several thousands of dollars of my hard earned money on Apple products, I am entitled to express my frustrations on how i perceive Apple is mishandling this situation.

The points I made and which I think are shared by others who have had the same experience were:

• If the Li-Ion battery in the iPhone 3GS and any other IOS devices that have the "built-in" feature Apple says it designed into it, why didn't Apple state that clearly in the documentation that comes with the phones. In short, why didn't Apple let the customers know this upfront. They tell you after the fact like I am supposed to be keeping count of the number of "charging cycles". No regular average consumer knows or keeps track of that.
• If this built-in feature Apple claims these batteries have, was part of the product's design when it was conceived and they knew the battery would expand, causing the phone to pop open and essentially render it useless, why wouldn't they have also designed some type of indicator or warning on the screen letting the user know to "consider replacing the battery" like my Acer 5742 with a Li-Ion battery does. Which by the way, it hasn't exploded as some of these "troll" have indicated that any Li-Ion battery would.
• The retail price of the iPhone 3GS not subsidized was approximately $600 if you wanted to buy it from Apple off the shelf. You would think any reasonable thinking person would expect a device costing this much would last more than 3-5 years and have a useful life at least that long, right? So why on earth would Apple assume that those of us who have had this "unexpected" event would acquiesce with them and agree that 3 years is enough, and buy a new phone?
• If this was the case with the iPhone 3GS what about the other iPhones, iPads, iPods, etc. There are already documented same cases with iPhone 4 and some iPods. Do they have this build in feature as well where the device will explode, pop or expand as a result of a Li-Ion battery failure?
• The final point is that we know that this doesn't happen just to an Apple product, that is why we all believe in the quality Apple products have and I think honestly, we may have expected this from another company but not from Apple. So, we feel a huge let down, incredulous that a company with a reputation for quality, innovation and which has developed a "cult" following with customers so loyal that they forgo buying other manufacturers' products already out in the market and wait for Apple's version.

I believe there are significant examples here that indicate this is not a normal occurrence. I have a hard time believing Apple knew exactly that this battery would behave this way. If they did, they were negligent by not making the consumer aware.

I think they are trying to rely on the "goodwill" of the brand name that consumers have which i think is a horrible corporate strategy.

Hopefully somebody at Apple reads these posts comes to their senses and comes up with a strategy that is not as myopic as what they are using now in their next high level meeting.

Great! Certainly an expert on Li-Ion batteries like yourself knows this. Why didn't Apple state this in the product's documentation and make the customer aware before buying the product that the battery has a built in feature that unless its replaced it will render your phone useless.

Better yet why didnt they put a screen indicator that alerts the user to replace the battery.

You Sir may be so smart to know the nuances of Li-Ion batteries but i guarantee you the average consumer doesnt. And guess who has bought the majority of the quarter of a billion iPhones that have been sold? yes plain average uninformed consumers like me. Not experts like you Sir.

This is not true at all. Show me data. I have a regular laptop PC machine with a Li-Ion battery. The OS alerted me to replace the battery. A year ago! it has not expanded, exploded or anything of the sort.

My opinion is you are making generalizations. You have posted here hyperlinks to articles derogatory to other manufacturers of cell phones. How come your post hasnt been removed? It did violate the conditions of use. But more importantly, those batteries that failed from those other brand names are removable, so they didnt destroy the phones like the 3GS battery and 4 batteries do.

Repost with Quotation:

You wrote:

Lawrence Finch NYC Area

superjaz1 wrote:

Just to note as I didn't mention it in my previous post, my wife stopped using the phone for a few months and it was sat in a drawer. Then about a week ago she decided to use it again and charged it up. The battery didn't start expanding till a few days later after charging however.

That is significant. Leaving it unused that long without charging it will allow the battery to drain completely. Complete discharge is a death warrant for Lithium chemistry batteries, as it is for most other secondary batteries. (If you did the same with your car battery you would get the same results.) When the phone shuts off due to low battery under normal use there is still plenty of charge left in the battery; it shuts off early to protect the battery from total discharge. But leaving it uncharged after it shuts off will eventually drain it completely, as a few functions of the phone continue to operate (primarily maintaining RAM memory).

This is not true at all. Show me data. I have a regular laptop PC machine with a Li-Ion battery. The OS alerted me to replace the battery. A year ago! it has not expanded, exploded or anything of the sort.

My opinion is you are making generalizations. You have posted here hyperlinks to articles derogatory to other manufacturers of cell phones. How come your post hasnt been removed? It did violate the conditions of use. But more importantly, those batteries that failed from those other brand names are removable, so they didnt destroy the phones like the 3GS battery and 4 batteries do.

Moderator: How come these hyperlinks are allowed?

Lawrence Finch NYC Area

CMC55 wrote:

You missed the point.

You are missing the point. It is a failure mode of ALL Lithium batteries, whether they are in iPhones, Galaxy phones, Windows phones, Nokias, laptops, Tesla cars or space ships. Apple's batteries if anything are safer than most others, as none of them have ever started a house fire or injured anyone, like these:

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/samsung- smartphone-battery-catches-on-fire-causes-second-degree-burns-1130104

http://www.emirates247.com/business/technology/samsung-galaxy-s4-catches-fire-wh ile-charging-2013-07-09-1.513659

http://osaseye.blogspot.com/2013/07/samsung-phone-battery-catches-fire-in.html#. Us9M0GRDuA0

http://www.digitaltree.org/samsung-galaxy-s3-fire-incident/

http://gsminsider.com/2013/07/samsung-galaxy-s4-exploded-hong-kong/

CMC55 wrote:

But more importantly, those batteries that failed from those other brand names are removable, so they didnt destroy the phones like the 3GS battery and 4 batteries do.

I guess you didn't read them. The DID destroy the phones, and, in one case a home. And they caused serious injury to several people who had the phones that they destroyed in their pockets.

I did see the articles and to me they looked like the Enquirer or any other tabloid would have made better, more credible sources than the ones you chose.

Again, you miss the points that I made, it has nothing to do with Samsung's batteries or Boeing's Li-Ion batteries. I dont care about those, I care about the batteries that are inside my Apple devices.

You Sir have no valid opinion on this matter, you are not an expert on Li-Ion batteries and more importantly, this has not happened to you, so how can you tell me or these people how to feel about this?

Lawrence Finch wrote:

Complete discharge is a death warrant for Lithium chemistry batteries, as it is for most other secondary batteries. (If you did the same with your car battery you would get the same results.)

Last time I looked I didn't have a Li-on battery in my car, you can't compare a car battery with a mobile phone battery

Message was edited by: superjaz1

CMC55 wrote:

You Sir may be so smart to know the nuances of Li-Ion batteries but i guarantee you the average consumer doesnt. And guess who has bought the majority of the quarter of a billion iPhones that have been sold? yes plain average uninformed consumers like me. Not experts like you Sir.

Agreed. This is not common knowledge and one should not assume that "Joe Public" and non-technical users know how to care for their batteries. It should be clearly stated in the manual something to the respect of: "Warning: Complete discharge of battery may lead to battery failure". And if I should be aware of how many times I have charged the battery before it needs replacing I need a way of finding this out. It's frustrating that I can't get a battery app to tell me how many times I've charged my iPhone and iPad because Apple doesn't allow access to this kind of data. I wonder why? What's the big deal? I know a battery isn't going to last forever. If I need to get it replaced I'm more than happy to spend the £55 to get it replaced, not wait for it to self destruct and destroy my device. I've had my iPad 3 almost 2 years now and the battery isn't what it used to be. Either this is due to iOS7 or my battery is slowly failing. It might even destroy my £400 iPad any second. But how would I know? Sadly I don't have access to that kind of information to find out. My crappy £35 Android e-reader tells me more information about the battery than my Apple devices.

My iPhone 3GS bought in june 2010 decided to inflate and explode the screen yesterday, I heard that this happens if you let it often on a docking station or charging.

I bought a Nexus 5 instead and I now live in 2014:)