14 DAY TRIAL // An iPhone 8 Plus 64GB has reportedly burst in Taiwan while it was being charged, raising questions about Apple’s battery provider ATL, which also made the famous exploding Samsung Galaxy Note 7 batteries.
Ever since the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 started catching fire, everyone is now looking for this problem with each new device release. In Samsung's case, it was a production mistake that cost the company a lot and forced them to retire an entire line of devices.
Apple hasn’t been spared, but the number of exploding iPhones was much lower if we take into account the total of units sold by the company. Now, their latest iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus have started to ship to customers, and some problems have already begun to appear.
Battery destroys the shell and pushes out the screen
While it’s not as exciting as catching fire, the fact that a woman’s iPhone 8 Plus 64GB had the screen pushed out by an inflating battery is bad enough. In fact, the woman, who identified just as Miss Wu, said that she hurried to pull the plug as fast as possible and that she thinks that it would have caught fire if she didn’t act.
Furthermore, it’s been reported that she was using the official charger and that she wasn’t a heavy user, She just watched movies, used Facebook, and maybe played some games. The device was already replaced by Apple, and they are taking a closer look.
The battery maker is under scrutiny again
The company that makes the batteries for the latest iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus is called ATL. It might sound familiar because it’s the same one that provided the batteries for Samsung Galaxy Note 7, and we all know how well that went.
In fact, Samsung ditched the ATL battery supplier after they failed to confirm the new regulations imposed. Because they were unable to guarantee the safety of the cells in a way that satisfied Samsung, ATL was dropped as a supplier.
It’s still early to tell if Apple has a problem with these batteries, but we’ll keep an eye out for more similar incidents.
