The whole incident was recorded by CCTV cameras

Oct 12, 2017 21:14 GMT  ·  By

The iPhone 8 Plus appears to be shipping with swollen batteries, but luckily for their owners, they don’t seem to explode. But as far as the iPhone 6s Plus is concerned, that’s a completely different story.

A Chinese woman referred to as Ms. Wang noticed that her iPhone 6s Plus was getting hot more than usual, so she decided to have it repaired at one of the local service centers.

The Daily Mail writes that the iPhone also experienced some other issues, including the battery draining faster than usual and the device shutting down all of a sudden at random times.

A service engineer at a repair shop near Xiangjisi in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province received the iPhone on October 8, being told to inspect the battery and eventually replace it should the existing one had swollen.

Swollen battery

But when removing the back cover of the iPhone, the device literally burst into flames only a few inches away from the face of the engineer. The man quickly threw the phone off his working station and jumped back a few meters, and this instant reaction helped him escape without any injuries. He returned looking for the phone to put out the fire, with damages only caused to his desk.

As far as the cause of the fire goes, it’s pretty clear the battery was at fault, but Apple says it’s already investigating to determine what might have led to those horrific flames.

“Normally there is a plastic tape attached to the battery, which is placed on the case and what we need to do is to tear the plastic tape off,” the service worker explained. “I guess there were some powder leaked from the battery and triggered physical reaction to blow up the phone.”

Apple hasn’t provided any other details about this incident, and judging from other cases, there’s a chance not another single word would be shared about what might have caused the explosion.