A man bit a smartphone battery as a test, and it exploded
A man at an electronics store in China decided to give a smartphone battery his own litmus test by biting it. The battery ruptured and caused a small explosion. The spectacle, captured by the store’s CCTV…
From the USA News Group archive. This article dates from Jan 24, 2018 and is preserved as first published.
A man at an electronics store in China decided to give a smartphone battery his own litmus test by biting it. The battery ruptured and caused a small explosion. The spectacle, captured by the store’s CCTV security cameras, was uploaded to Miaopai, a Chinese video sharing platform similar to the now-defunct Vine. It has since garnered 4.69 million views.
According to Taiwan News, the man was in the store on January 19th to replace his iPhone battery. It’s not clear which store he was in, but the side of the shop has big characters that read “Professional screen change.” The man began to look closely at the battery and, to check if it was real, decided to bite down on it, triggering the explosion. Despite the fact that the blast was inches from the man’s face, and other onlookers, no one was reportedly injured.
According to Taiwan News, the man was in the store on January 19th to replace his iPhone battery.
“The battery is not gold, why are you biting it?” a Chinese netizen joked.
While it’s true that faulty and counterfeit lithium-ion batteries may sometimes explode or simply overheat, this man’s method of testing the battery was pretty suspect, as we won’t know whether the battery exploded because it’s fake or because he damaged it with his teeth.
After Apple admitted last month it was throttling iPhone CPUs to combat older batteries’ random shutdowns, the company offered battery replacements for $29 instead of the usual $79, which will possibly lead to more people deciding to replace their devices’ batteries.
