Exploding iPhones set France alight

While the world waits with bated breath for news of Apple's mythic new iTablet, France's consumer affairs organisation is to investigate a spate of exploding iPhones, eight cases of which have so far been reported over the summer.

Despite the fact that this represents a mere 0.00067 per cent of the 1.2m iPhones sold in France, the Direction Générale de la Concurrence de la Consommation et de la Répression des Fraudes appears unable to resist the intense media coverage the incendiary gadgets have generated since a teenage boy was struck by a piece of glass from an exploding iPhone earlier this month.

The boy's phone apparently began hissing before the screen shattered, sending shards flying through the air. "My son was frightened but he did not lose an eye," his mother told AFP.

The incident seems to have encouraged other owners of the uber-desirable smart-phone to come forward. One of them, an 80-year-old Parisian, said his handset started vibrating and overheating. When he took it out of his pocket, Rolland Caufman claims, the screen cracked up. After initially refusing to believe him, Apple eventually sent the pensioner a replacement.

As well as the DGCCRF's official probe, the European Commission has said it is looking into the incidents and has issued an alert to all 27 EU member nations via its Rapex system, set-up as a rapid response system to identify dangerous consumer products. Apple, for its part, insists the iPhone bonfires are isolated incidents.

Steve Jobs's company - and many of its rivals - have been dogged by tales of exploding and overheating gadgets for years. Unfortunately for Apple, with its notoriously obsessive fanbase, any tales of malfunctioning products are lapped up by the internet blogging community.

The company, which has gained a reputation for extreme secrecy, has not helped its case by appearing to attempt to suppress news of exploding Apple devices. Ken Stanborough, a 47-year-old man from Liverpool, dropped his daughter's Apple iTouch in July. When it started hissing and overheating, he threw it outside his back door.

"There was a pop, a big puff of smoke and it went 10ft in the air," he told the Times. Stanborough claims Apple sent a letter saying to him offering to refund the cost of the device in return for a confidentiality agreement.

Rather than any fault specific to Apple products, the most plausible explanation for the phenomenon of exploding electronic devices of all brands is the widespread use of powerful Lithium-ion polymer batteries. These are fairly unstable and easily damaged by owners either opening up devices and tinkering with their insides, or by simple knocks and drops.

If these 'Li-pol' batteries are pierced or short-circuited they frequently go up in flames. With their high energy density and - as in the case of the iPhone - sealed tightly in a handset case, escaping gases resulting from an overheating battery would be highly likely to cause an explosion - perhaps even sending the handset rocketing 10ft into the air. ·