Q: iPhone 3gs exploding expanding battery

You missed the point. The money is not the main issue, it's the fact that the battery or the design is defective and Apple should own up to it.

J.K. ROFLing Texas, USA, Earth, Sol, Milky Way

Hey, all of you guys with "exploding", "expanding", "swelling", whatever batteries. If you haven't called Apple yet, do so. What is the worse that they can tell you? That it isn't covered? Well, if that's their answer, you are no worse off, you are only out a few minutes of time and there is a case created in their system (unlike complaining here) that you are having this problem.

But who knows, if you are nice and aren't screaming and hollering, they just might be able to so something. Then again, they might charge you for the battery replacement, $80 if I remember correctly, but they might cover the parts damaged by the battery.

Who knows for sure what they will do, but IMHO its worth a shot.

Your answer states the obvious, most people have no quarrel with Apple so why would anybody be uncivilized?  I think your answer misses the point as well.

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/

It may be obvious to you and me, but it isn't for some of the people posting in this thread.

First off my comment was not directed to you. I think youre being inflamatory here with your comments. I have read your comments and nowhere did I see were you had this very same experience yourself and you seem to be on this crusade to minimize our experience. Why? You certainly are entitled to your opinion, free speech is our right, but I think you are taking this role of self appointed expert on Lithium Ion batteries too far. Your comments are not useful from the standpoint that you make us look like we are a bunch of whiners

as though we dont have a right to express to Apple our displeasure with the way they are handling this situation.

I can see you expressing your opinion once or twice, but it appears to me that you want to contradict, minimize and ridicule people's legitimate right to express their displeasure as though we are ignorant.

If it weren't for people like us who take the time to voice our discontent in a respectful yet honest way, then nothing would be done about this or any other problem. I got news for you, companies and technology makes mistakes and many of those who recognized it, had to make good on their mistake. And you know what? Customers respect that when a company admnits to have made a mistake.

We are not bad mouthing Apple, we are all loyal fanatics of Apple's products and have been for a long time, some of us, as expressed in the comments, are shocked that apple would handle this issue like this. And we want Apple to know i t. Plain and simple, no hidden agendas...the truth.

CMC55 is spot on here.

The fact is that those whose phones are being destroyed in this way have no prior knowledge of the fact that it is even possible to occur, unless they are a technophile and dig deep. There has been no recall (such as Toyota regularly have done when faults are found, and they focus heavily on customer satisfaction despite heavy losses), nor has there been any public interaction whatsover by Apple, apart from deleting posts in this thread!

In staying silent they leave their customers vulnerable to abguish and complete loss of data. And their investment is destroyed - unless of course they pay £80 or whatever for the priivilege of having a design fault fixed – and I doubt they'll make losses on those amounts.

Imagine if this happened in their computers! They would have no customer base at all very quickly. It seems that because it's a phone a few years old then it's expendable. Well it's not how I've been brought up and if you want to stick to 'old' technology then why not? On environmental policy alone it's shoddy.

This phenomenon is incredible and Apple's approach in dealing with it disdainful.

Totally agree with BombDog and CMC55. When my phone "expanded" and self destructed and I took it into the Apple store I was told by a genius that this was a "feature" of the phone. i.e. as Lawrence Finch has pointed out this is the way that Apple prevents the phone from igniting and REALLY doing damage to life and property.

Fine.

But how about telling us about this wonderful feature BEFORE we buy the phone? If I had known that at approximately 2.5 years my $700 device would self destruct I might have made a different decision about buying it.

If I had been told beforehand about this excellent feature of the iPhone 3GS I would have been very careful to have the battery replaced after 2 years. A statement in the manual, or on the packaging such as: "WARNING: battery MUST be replaced in 2 years to avoid total self-destruction of this device."

The big question I have is: why is Apple not disclosing this very important feature of their phones?

Now I have an iPhone 5 that is about 1.5 years old. Is it soon going to self destruct? How will I know? Apple is not telling us, so how can we find out? Is it the responsibility now of all owners of Apple products with enclosed non user servicable batteries--which are now in tens of millions of devices including MacBook Airs, countless iPhones, and iPads--to search online for discussion threads such as this one to know if we have to replace the batteries? Or do we just wait for these devices to "expand" safely, and nicely self destruct without catching on fire?

Or should it be up to Apple to tell us when the battery ought to be replaced?

In all my life of about 50 years of owning countless electronic devices from my first 6 transistor radio to my current MacBook Air I've never had a product that self-destructed BY DESIGN after 2.5 years. And with no warning. To me and many on this group the responsibility should be with the manufacturer to explain clearly up front when and how to change batteries in their products if those batteries are designed to and known to destroy the product only 2 or 3 years after the product is purchased.

Now THAT seems blatantly obvious to most of us. Why is it not obvious to Apple?

Barry Shell wrote:

 

I took it into the Apple store I was told by a genius that this was a "feature" of the phone.

Ludicrous. A burst tyre is not a feature of the tyre, a leaking pipe is not a feature of the pipe, and an expanding Li-on battery  is not a feature of an iPhone.

as Lawrence Finch has pointed out this is the way that Apple prevents the phone from igniting and REALLY doing damage to life and property.

No he didn't. This is on record in this thread.

In all my life of about 50 years of owning countless electronic devices from my first 6 transistor radio to my current MacBook Air I've never had a product that self-destructed BY DESIGN after 2.5 years.

And you haven't had one now.  I have also owned countless electronic produducts for well over 50 years, and have noted that Lithium ion batteries have only been used for the last twenty years or so, and are a lot more reliable now to what they were like then.

These batteries have been installed in hundreds of millions of devices. OK, so several thousand have given problems. Even tens of thousands. Name me another product of this type that is manufactured in these numbers and has never had a fault.

To me and many on this group the responsibility should be with the manufacturer to explain clearly up front when and how to change batteries in their products if those batteries are designed to and known to destroy the product only 2 or 3 years after the product is purchased.

Again, ludicrous. Are you sure you are of the age you imply?

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.

jfromwisconsin wrote:

 

 

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

That's a pretty meaningless sentence. You have licensed the post to Apple.

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!

Please add another EXPLODING  battery to the list, this just happened today, my 3GS LCD top cover started popping off from the top, I removed the LCD/Digitizer to see whats going on and I noticed the RF sheilding cover was warped on the top of the logic board, a minute later the battery expanded and popped the circuit board out of the phone at the camera corner side, cracked the board in half  from the pressure of the battey having room to grow now since the LCD was off.  Dear Apple what would have happend if I tried to push the LCD/Digitizer back on and I burst the LION battery from pressure ? My 3GS is ruined now, the logic board is snapped off, and this is a normal event dont worry .......

Ruined Logic board, my phone was working fine earler today but was not holding a charge well anymore.  I literally watched the battery expand and crack the phones board, it took 1 minute to  destroy my phone !

Another case of an exploding iphone 3GS battery with me too, this past weekend - usual stuff, reported it with no joy - in fact once you've reported it via a call to Apple and they've established that no leakage, personal injury or damage to property  was caused (presumably all 'liability' stuff) they're pretty quick to wash their hands of it.  The only solution offered is to pay the battery replacement surcharge & to replace it with a like for like 3GS - not impressed.

There doesn't seem to be any appreciation by them that customers expect a lasting quality product from a supposed reputable name or of the concern that people are gobsmacked about the fact that this can happen - even more fundamentally, why isnt this explained as a potential risk (or 'feature' as they call it) within their product documentation/safety notices?

You do expect a product to last more than 3 or so years & it makes you wonder if all the conspiracy theory stuff about 'designed-in' obsolescence to these sorts of products (to encourage purchase of replacement prodcts) may actually have some truth.

On the plus side - a replacement is a replacement. Is that new or refurbished?

how much did they want for the battery replacement?