Teen's Eye Injured by Shattering iPhone

Less than two weeks after another hot issue (pun intended) regarding exploding devices, Apple is back in the news again. In this case, unlike the prior incident, where the owner was unhurt, the victim suffered eye injuries.

The incident occurred in Aix-en-Provence in southern France. According to the victim's mother, the iPhone began "hissing" and the screen suddenly broke, sending shards flying. Marie-Dominique Kolega, who contacted Apple over the incident, said:

"My son was frightened but he did not lose an eye."

What's most interesting, or perhaps, unnerving, are the similarities between this incident and the recent one which occurred in the U.K.


In that case, the owner, or to be precise, the father of the owner, said the following occurred after he dropped his daughter's iPod touch:

“It made a hissing noise. I could feel it getting hotter in my hand, and I thought I could see vapour”. Mr Stanborough said he threw the device out of his back door, where “within 30 seconds there was a pop, a big puff of smoke and it went 10ft in the air”.

Hissing, and then an explosion? Perhaps the iPhone and its sibling the iPod touch have a secret hand grenade setting.

No word on if Apple asked for a gag order in this case. In July, as noted in the post on the earlier incident, an investigation by local TV station KIRO-TV used a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to there existed more than 800 pages of information on such incidents, including 15 burn and fire-related incidents blamed by iPod owners on their devices.