Tech giant Apple is looking in to reports of swelling of batteries from its newly launched iPhone 8 Plus smartphones. The swollen batteries caused the smartphones to break open. There are at least five such reports where the new iPhone 8 Plus batteries were swollen and as a result, the screens were detached from its bodies.
Reports of such swollen iPhones came from Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Canada and Greece and all of them have shown similar symptoms. This has indicated that there was a single batch of devices which turned out to be defective. A spokesperson from Apple said that they were looking in to the matter. The company has reportedly collected some of the devices by the mobile phone operator partners for investigation.
However, this is reportedly not the first time Apple has faced an issue of swollen batteries. Apple manufactures and sells 40 million to 80 million iPhones per quarter, which means that there could be manufacturing defects or problems during shipping in such a volume. Still the focus has remained on the battery issues after Samsung too faced a similar problem with its 2016 Galaxy Note 7. The design of the battery and manufacturing issues had led the Note 7s to catch fire.
However, Samsung then recalled the devices and shipped a second batch of devices with a different battery from a different supplier. But even that faced similar issues and forced the company to permanently recall and discontinue the smartphone. The incident worked like a lesson for other companies as well in terms of battery safety and testing. Some of them opted to provide battery with a less capacity instead of facing a similar staggering loss. Swelling of a battery might not be as bad as the battery catching fire, but can still be dangerous for the users and depends on how they are being handled by various users.
Photo Credits: gizbot
