File photo shows customers visiting a new Apple store in Nanjing, eastern China’s Jiangsu province. — AFP photo
SHANGHAI: Apple has blamed “external physical damage” for causing a handful of iPhones to explode or catch fire in China and insisted that its handsets posed no safety problem.
Fresh on the heels of Samsung’s worldwide Galaxy Note 7 safety fiasco, a Shanghai consumer watchdog said last Friday it had received eight recent reports of iPhones that spontaneously combusted while being used or charged.
In a statement to AFP late Tuesday, the US tech giant said it had retrieved units for analysis and conducted thorough tests on phones which had experienced “thermal events”, but brushed off safety concerns.
“The units we’ve analysed so far have clearly shown that external physical damage happened to them which led to the thermal event,” the statement said.
“We treat safety as a top priority and have found no cause for concern with these products.”
The company also denied being slow to respond, after the state-run Shanghai Consumer Council had urged it to address consumer complaints.
The watchdog’s report quoted one woman as saying her iPhone 6s Plus exploded in August, shattering the screen and leaving the battery and back of the phone blackened. — AFP