iPhone 6 Explodes, Burns Cyclist’s Leg

An iPhone 6 exploded in the pocket of a cyclist as he fell down, causing third-degree burns on his leg. Now he wants to spread awareness of the incident in order to improve the safety features of the Apple product’s batteries.

The cyclist was Gareth Clear, 36. He is a consultant in Sydney, Australia and when he fell down while riding his bike on Sunday, his iPhone 6 exploded in his pocket, CNET reports.

Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald, Clear reiterates his experience during the accident.

"I just saw smoke coming out of my back pocket and I was completely bewildered about what it was and then all of a sudden I felt this surging pain," he explained.

Clear suffered third-degree burns and needed skin grafts on the back of his right thigh. After the accident, he took to Twitter to share his experience and to warn people against allowing their phones equipped with lithium-ion batteries to overheat or to suffer an impact.

Clear has also spoken with Apple regarding the matter and it seems everything has been cleared up. On Clear’s side, he says that he doesn’t blame Apple entirely for what happened, Apple Insider reports. He just wanted to spread awareness regarding the dangers of mishandling devices as much as possible.

Battery Safety Consulting notes that problems like what Clear had to deal with could arise from the manufacturing process of the batteries. Supposedly, 1 in 10 million batteries could fail. Since as many as 6 billion batteries are produced each and every year, the failure rate stands at around 600, which is a minuscule number, to say the least.

These li-ion batteries are not all installed in smartphones either as they are also installed in toys, computers and more. So aside from taking care of just smartphones, people are warned to treat any device with li-ion batteries with care.