Not even a month after three iPods got all
hot and
bothered on separate
occasions, along comes images showing that even Apple's iPhone isn't immune to melting itself. Purportedly, the handset was purchased from Carphone Warehouse in December, but was never activated for one reason or another. Just this week, the owner's son slapped it in a dock with intentions of activating, walked downstairs to catch the last few minutes of
Magnum, P.I. and returned to his room to find a "stupidly hot" iPhone which had already melted in some parts and had its screen cracked from the reaction. Not surprisingly, he's currently in the middle of a runaround trying to get someone to remedy the issue, but thankfully no Earthlings, carpets or IKEA desks were harmed.
Update: Thanks to Logan5's quick eyes, it appears we've discovered a scammer in our midst. Essentially, this bloke posted the
real story
here noting that the crack (more on that
here) actually appeared after it was mishandled and dropped. Haven't we learned this approach
doesn't work by now?
posted Apr 3rd 2008 9:23AM
I call BS.
lol! that blows. hope he can get a replacement, but why on earth was he watching magnum pi?
Jut look at the crack. It is obviously an impact bullet with crushed glass in the center. Not to mention there is nothing behind the black plastic here to cause the melting. He probably took a lighter to it. The battery is higher up.
Looks like he stepped on the front and took a lighter to the back. :/
If what Logan has posted further down is correct, then you're bang on...
Major pwnage
i knew it was a hot phone but not like that...
Why are the images flipped?
@ Chris Green
Apple's Photo Booth programme does that... there's an option to flip the image to the correct side which obviously he didn't check.
oh, and it's not April fools anymore; I don't find that funny.
This EXACT thing happened to me, but I just took it to the Apple store and they gave me a new one!
You know this story has been uncovered as a total sham, right?
Yeeeaaahhh...
This is a little awkward...
I wouldn't buy my iPhone from anywhere but Apple and AT&T. Sucks for him.
He's in the UK, fool.
I'm sorry I didn't know that my bad. Just cause someone makes a mistake or something doesn't mean you start calling them names, engadgetluvsappl.
Stuff overheat all the time so what.
that t-shirt is from river island.
THIS IS A SCAM!!!
The SAME USER (thesheephair) posted this on MacRumors:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=463250
In effect, he claims his father dropped the iPhone cracking the screen and he was trying to figure out a way to get Apple to replace the unit for free. One of the things he wanted to do was quote:
"hmmm well i guess it can be a hardware flaw of over heating ...therefore glass and heat can be buyable,
huge glass screen is too much of a design flaw imo.."
Nice investigative work.
I thought this story was an attempt at covering up accidental damage.
Nice catch man, I think this comment from one of the members from MacRumors explains it well..
"I'm all for Apple replacing genuine hardware faults on jailbroken/unlocked phones, but to want to get a phone that you/someone else actually smashed replaced free of charge by claiming a design defect is just plain wrong.
Do what you will, but don't expect any help or encouragement here."
People like this ruin it for everybody else..
I hate people that lie just to get glory.
ive seen so many blurry photos that pictures that are clear like this make me immediately believe the story. is that wrong?
Uh, evidently. Yes.
I think the most important question is why in the name of all that's good and holy was he watching Magnum, P.I.?
FAKE!
the battery isn't even behind the plastic part - the antenna is
wow, what a scam, its not even real... look what the other guy posted, its even the same screen name, he says how his dad droped it, and it was jailbroken and unlocked... so duh he needed a cover up so he could get it replaced... uupdate it engadget...
scam is a scam
Two words... Fact checking... I'm all for this newfangled news from blogs deal over traditional media, but there need to be more actual Journalism work done... Not that print media isn't susceptible to being scammed or possibly fool of fraud in their articals, but still... it seems to me that'd it be easier to track down scamming with simple google searching with things like this... but meh, better luck next time engadget...
It's a bit hard to scour various forums thinking you might glean some extra information about a story like this. Without the hive-mind of the internet, it's doubtful anyone could have made this correlation. Take a look at the facts, and then reconsider your comment.
Facts? A google search of his screen name turns up the real story. Maybe you need some facts checked for yourself?
My Theory, Jailbreak didn't go well, threw it at wall, now trying to get a new one.
Faslane
This may be a scam, but every time I am on a call for a while or browsing over edge I notice the back of my iPhone, particularly the logo, gets almost too hot to touch. I never really thought about it, but does anyone else have this issue?
This is common, I know my iPhone and 2 of my friends iPhones do the exact same thing when we browse the internet for a long time. Not sure why, but it has not seemed to be a problem..... yet.
Yes, look at the crack lines on the front. It has an impact point (next to the Home button) and all the crack lines radiate from it. It shows something hard hit that spot and cracked the screen.
I suggest Engadget insert an update or remove this story altogether, because some readers might just read the headlines, and spread this false news to other places and cause misunderstanding.
I second that suggestion for removal.
It looks like his dog chewed on it too. Look at the back - it's like there's bite marks in it. Lol.
The truth is now shed into the light. I hate when people do something stupid to a device, then claim it was from something else. This is stupid and not a great way to get a lot of publicity while doing it, because eventually someone will find out about it anyway.
Ahh, nice... updated.. The speed of retraction on the net is certainly faster than the old media... good on you engadget...
From reading this guys posts over at MacRumors, he bought the phone before Christmas, activated, jailbroke and unlocked it, and then bricked it while trying to install just too many tricks and whistles. He then states that his father stood on it and asked in the forums for advice about 'viginising' it before returning it to Apple. Looks like he's an idiot to me.
well at least apple now knows that this is a scam.
i am sure they ll be checking engadget!!
What a gimp, fair enough if it was a design default but come on, if you broke it yourself then wtf
now if they had said they pulled it from the dock and burnt his hands so he dropped because of the heat and had pictures or dr visit for burnt fingers this may have been plausable. But that is the chance i guess people take when they don't activate on the approved vendor to get the insurance
what a schmuck.
Did someone really need to 'blow his cover' before you realized it was a fraud? Hmmm. Bought from Carphone Warehouse (what the hell is THAT?), didn't activate it right away, and this is after iPhones have been on the market for nearly a year. Yeah, we needed Sherlock Holmes for that one.
Yeah yeah yeah, sometimes people don't activate them right away, but they way it fits in this story screams HOKEY.
Carphone Warehouse is one two non-Apple retail stores authorised to sell the iPhone in the UK.
Carphone Warehouse is an independent mobile phone retailer in the UK. When they started in the early 90s, car phones were the big thing, hence the name. They sell phones/phone plans from all the well known manufacturers and mobile network operators. They are an Apple authorised reseller of the iPhone.
I see. Didn't know they used the term 'car' in the UK. Or at least the term 'car' to refer to a, well, car.
Looks like it was dropped.
I pray that this comes back to my service centre for repair... We will laugh so hard.
You know what's awesome? My iPhone's power button wasn't working, so I walked into the store, told them, and walked out with a brand new one. Have fun "fighting" for a new iPhone.
Maybe if Engadget wasn't so eager to kowtow to a vocal minority who seem to think they post too much on one of the biggest players in the consumer electronic world, then they wouldn't feel the need to report as news random problems of dubious nature (from any manufacturer for that matter).
This is classic. In one forum he says that the phone is jail broken and in another he says it isn't. (He was trying to find a way to restore it to original, because in order to pull off his scam with Apple it would need to be in original condition). When asked to explain this discrepancy (among all the other lies) his response is (and this is just classic):
"Jailbroken means that it has been hacked, i thought jailbroken meant that it was opened and turned on and not out of the box in new condition, i stupidly thought jail was the box and broken opened so therefore the seal was broken on the iphone box.. wayy arnt i smart."
My iPhone fried itself while docked, it was so hot it actually burned my oh so tender fingers. But I've got to say that Apple took good care of me- I had a new phone the same day at the Apple store. Fantastico. Mucho fantastico. This guy, however, seems a bit @$$ico.
I've had my iPhone overheat once before, and AppleCare told me that any and all heat issues mean an immediate replacement. If it's overheating, that's dangerous. Tell them at the Genius Bar, and they're told to give you an immediate replacement.
If there's a fight about it, that means its not overheating or that he hasn't even gone to the store
This actually happened to a friend of mine. The iPhone overheated while on a wall charger and would not work after that. Surprisingly, Apple sent him a replacement model free of charge.
Too bad, it really did. Put it on a 3rd party dock and it fried.
I dislike(hate is such a harsh word) people who make things up just to fit in or get in the conversation. . . .
It's from prolonged edge network use. Those chips really heat up, but the iPhone, and most other phones, are designed to take it. You'll note that it doesn't get warm when browsing over wifi.
I can see it already, the future of terrorism, exploding apple devices, the world is endanger people, fight the terrorist!
What? Did you think we were still riding around via horse and cart?
I remember having a huge fight with next byte in Australia (who represent apple currently) over a cracked macbook screen. Such a drag... they thought i was having them on. A hairline fracture developed from the bottom left of the screen and gradually extended to the top right of the screen over the course of a couple of days. It was so fine and almost impossible to photograph but they were insistent that I dropped of my laptop even though it was perfect and didnt have a mark on it. I ended up having to research and eventually found a whole lot of people with the same problem- the hinge was too tight so when the screen was opened from the corner it would flex the lcd, akin to grabbing a piece of paper by the corner to turn it over. I eventually got it replaced but they took a month to fix it and made me feel like a criminal in the process... RRR. Always open my screen from the center now, always.
I almost believed this story.
The other night i plugged in my iphone and let it charge over night. When i picked it up to take it to work the next morning it was about 95 degrees. I was actually afraid that it might explode. Worse yet the battery was not charged at all. So i had a dead iphone all day that day. Great...
Anyone else seen any behavior like that?
No, im not making any of that up
had one get very hot from a belkin ipod car charger, never melted. fried it completely, works perfect on any ipod though WTF!!!!
This Muhammad Samad Saharan person is a complete moron... does he think he's google-proof or something?
I think it makes a good story... up there with the dude on oprah that wrote some life story or some shite.