Oliver Haslam·

User Claims iPhone 8 Battery Got Swollen While On Charge, Apple Investigating

When you cram a battery into a small space there will always be some examples of things going a little awry. We all know how Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 fared last year with batteries exploding and the device ultimately being recalled and cancelled, and while that is an extreme, smartphones of all shapes and sizes have a love/hate relationship with batteries.

The new iPhone 8 Plus (or iPhone 8 for that matter) is no different, and we now have two examples of batteries which appear to have swollen to the extent that the smartphone’s structural integrity failed.

The worst example was reported by ifeng which shared news of a Taiwanese iPhone 8 Plus owner whose iPhone had its screen dislodged by what appears to be a swollen battery. The iPhone is now in the hands of Apple, with tests being carried out to work out just what happened. According to the woman reporting the issue, her iPhone started to exhibit signs of problems when it had been on charge for a few minutes.

The phone belonged to a Ms. Wu, who recently renewed her phone contract and purchased a 64GB rose gold iPhone 8 Plus.

The issue emerged five days after purchasing the phone. Wu placed her phone on charge, using the supplied cable and adaptor. After three minutes, she reported seeing the front panel bulge, and eventually lift completely from the device.

According to multiple Taiwanese outlets, the phone was later recovered by the carrier, and has since been shipped to Apple for analysis.

While some media outlets appear to be reporting that the battery of a second iPhone 8 Plus exploded, that does not appear to be the case. An exploding battery would be expected to cause damage than can be seen in photos tweeted by the Japanese owner.

Interestingly, he says that his iPhone came in the box like that, suggesting the damage was done in transit.

(via TNW)

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