iPhone 3gs exploding expanding battery

Ok so I have the same issue and I'm happy to join the chat. I agree with all of the past responses in regards to the money situation. The money is not the concern here folks - it is the safety of product. Two of my Iphone 3G's that I purchased in 2009 have been stored in a shoebox in a box under my bed. Yesterday I pulled out the phones, re-connected to my laptop with a goal to use for media players and music hubs for our kids. Today I went back and pulled out the phones. Both were exploded; one is so bad that the screen actually broke off and the power cable connector for USB cracked and snapped off from the mother board.

If I go to Apple to fix/replace - are they able to obtain the root file system from the original 3gs? I do have backups from the phones; however, the backups don't seem to include the Root/Private/Var/Media folder extensions, so I am assuming this is all onto the 'hard-drive' of the actual phone and is not included into the backup files?

So, question one - slightly off topic - Do backups include the private Var root file folders?

Question two - is apple able to take the phone board 'hard-drive' and put it into a new shell?

Question three - has anyone ever been able to make progress with addressing this issue in regards to the CPSC Saftey Recalls or regs..?

Note - This message has been electronically documented and filed with legal offices.

I am pretty horrified by all of this I have to say.

We recently acquired a well cared for 3gs which must be about 36 months old. I started accusing my wife of destroying the technology even though she only managed to use it for a day before it started misbehaving - first software issues then I assumed she'd dropped it as the case started to swell with hairline cracks.

We left it for a while over christmas - looked again last night and wowee the thing had really opened up. A friend helped us crack it open, OUTSIDE i hasten to add, and had to stab the battery to stop it exploding as the main board pinged off when the case was opened.

So I'm left with a useless pile of warped components which were sold and purchased in good faith with no knowledge of this phenomenon.

WHAT DO I DO NOW? apart from whinge and whine on here? its pretty scary. which of my apple devices will explode next.

I appreciate this may be a phenomenon of all Li-Ion battteries or whatever, but its Apples' UNIQUE (?) obsession with making components effectively inaccessible which makes this a specificliability of, presumably all, Apple handheld products? if they had standard easilly accessed battery compartments like every other phone, then you would have an inherent pressure release mechanism, and the opportunity to get at, inspect, check and readilly replace the battery as required.

I think its inappropriate of Apple to take No reponsibility for this.

Please help me to take appropriate action on this issue.

Thinking about it - if you play by the rules, which I tried to, everything is registered through apple and itunes. I got this 3GS after it was properly unlocked by the previous carrier/owner. This is all documented and registered through iTunes at Apple behest.

They KNOW this device lay dormant for however long, and was then re-registered appropriately and reinitiated.

They should have told me if there was a resulting liability.

All my laptops warn me the battery needs replacing - ... and apple didnt say a thing!

If the battery expanded and broke open your iphone in your back pocket without noticing it which is very easy to do and you sat down compressing the display and logic board into the expanded battery what would happen to the battery then, it would most likely burst, What are the circumstances when a chemically unstable lithium ion battery is compressed and it bursted open in your pocket,

Here's another. I've not spoken to Apple as it sounds like there's no point. I wonder if this will happen to my iPhone 4s or my iPad? 😕 I was going to try and repair it myself by replacing battery and housing but the force of the battery expanding has split some of the wiring 😮

wombatz_uk wrote:

But I'm still deeply annoyed that they couldn't provide some kind of warning? I can't believe that they can't detect an outgoing battery and warn the user to get it replaced. Even of they only have a 3 yr warning.

Probably less than 0.01% of batteries fail this spectacularly. The rest just fade away, and that's pretty obvious. Or perhaps your battery life has been going down for a while, but you didn't notice.

...and how come all these legacy models are "in stock" you can't buy a "new 4s 16gb anywhere yet they have a 3GS sitting on the shelf?

Because if they sold the in stock legacy models there wouldn't be any left to to replace yours 😉

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.

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.

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?

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:)

tonefox wrote:

Well done. You now have three years or so before you wonder if the battery will suffer the same fate at a similar age.

Hopefully his Nexus will have a battery indicator or at the very least, clear documentation that will tell him when to replace the battery so that he won't have to "wonder" anything.