Apple To Investigate Europe’s Exploding iPhones

Reports in Europe of problems with iPhones heating up or even exploding are being investigated by Apple, the European Commission has revealed.

According to Reuters reports, the EC said in a press conference that it had contacted Apple about the iPhone and iPod Touch problems reported by some consumers in Europe.

“Apple have come back to us … and what they’ve said to us is that they consider these are isolated incidents. They don’t consider that there’s a general problem,” Reuters reported Helen Kearns telling a news briefing.

One of the reports included a teenager in France who apparently reported his iPhone heating up and shattering.

For its part Apple is continuing to insist that it won’t comment on any faults with iPhones until it has access to the devices themselves.

Last month an iPod Touch belonging to an 11 year old girl from Liverpool apparently “exploded”. The girl’s father Ken Stanborough, 47, said that he dropped the device which then made a “hissing noise” and eventually exploded “there was a pop, a big puff of smoke and it went 10ft in the air” he reportedly told the newspaper.

Aside from the issue of whether the device actually exploded or not, Apple could be facing more bad publicity from how it appears to have handled the incident. Stanborough apparently told The Times that after contacting the company about the incident, he was sent a letter offering a refund on the condition that “agree that you will keep the terms and existence of this settlement agreement completely confidential”.

Apple has so far refused to comment on the case – claiming that it has not seen the device in question so cannot verify the incident.

The reported incident in Liverpool, follows the apparent emergence of similar cases in the US. Late last month, a reporter from Seattle’s KIRO TV station reported how the station used the Freedom of Information Act to get the Consumer Product Safety Commission to turn over 800-pages which referred to issues of iPods overheating.