A smartphone user in China miraculously escaped serious injury after biting into a smartphone – and having its battery explode in his face.
Before we continue, we must point out this wasn’t your standard Galaxy Note 7-style flammable faux-pas. The man involved wasn’t using his handset as intended when the incident occurred.
For a reason that will only ever be obvious to the phone’s owner, he chose to bite into the battery at the electronics store, after it had been removed from the phone. This, it turns out, isn’t such a great idea.
According to the Taiwan News, the guy was in the unnamed store having the battery replaced on his iPhone (although note that we can’t independently verify if it was, indeed, an iPhone he decided to snack on).
Amazingly, as you can see in the .GIF file below, neither the biter nor the folk in his direct vicinity were seriously hurt.
The video clip, captured from the store’s security cameras, was uploaded to the Miaopai sharing site (via The Verge). It has now racked up over 4.78 million views in the past three days.
The bizarre incident occurred as Apple wrestles with claims it deliberately slowed down the performance of iPhone handsets with older batteries.
Cupertino says the move was designed to prevent unexpected shutdowns, but some users believe the firm’s actions are designed to push users into updating their phones rather than simply replacing the batteries.
As a show of good faith, Apple is offering cheap battery replacements to all users with compatible handsets, but is currently experiencing stock shortages.
Of course, this has nothing to do with some guy deciding it might be a good idea to sink his teeth into a phone battery. No company can legislate for that.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
