William Gallagher
Second time's the charm: A personal trainer again accidentally dropped a gym weight on his iPhone 15 Pro Max, discovering that physics are remorseless and iPhones aren't invulnerable.
There are people who destroy devices to make idiotic YouTube videos, and there's Apple that might destroy thousands of them in testing. But then there are also people like personal trainer Kyle Counts who wouldn't dream of smashing a costly iPhone — but accidentally do precisely that. Many times.
As reported by Newsflare, Counts was working a triceps exercise in a gym in Scapoose, Oregon when his iPhone fell out of his pocket. He didn't notice it until the end of his exercise when he dropped the 90 pound dumbbell he was using, onto the floor and right onto the iPhone.
The gym's security footage shows the accident, plus Counts' face looking exactly like anyone's would after this. But then he picked up the iPhone and smoke began coming out of it — and it began sparking.
"I was initially annoyed but the screen was still on and working until it lit up like a roman candle in my hand," said Counts.
"Obviously my first instinct was drop the phone but when I saw it wasn't just smoking but started sparking I grabbed it as fast as I could and ran outside through the emergency exit," he continued. "The phone kept sparking so I tried to kick it with my foot into a puddle to submerge it to hopefully put out the fire."
"It just boiled in the water for a bit before finally smouldering out," he said. "I didn't really have time to think about anything apart from getting that smoke out of the gym as fast as possible."
Dropping a weight on an iPhone turns out to be less of a rare event than it should be — if you're Kyle Counts. "I have dropped a dumbbell on my phone twice and broke it in the car door twice," he added.
It's not clear whether his phones were destroyed each time, but of the four incidents, he says this is the worst. "They have never emitted any smoke or gas before," he said.
Perhaps his best option is to leave his iPhones in a locker. But he could also try ruggedized iPhone cases, just as a start.
Chip Loder
Marko Zivkovic
Malcolm Owen
Amber Neely
Christine McKee
13 Comments
Why bother posting about this, directing more people to click on it. It only encourage more of this type of garbage YouTube content.
Well, there's the warning about kicking a lithium based battery into a puddle of water...
"There are people who destroy devices to make idiotic YouTube videos,"
Again find it strange the AI staff seem to take others' destruction of their Apple devices, for which they personally, or through a sponsor, have paid for them, quite so personally. Yeah, there's the kids that buy PS5s and smash them in front of release day lines at BestBuy just for clicks... But JerryRigEverything does his series of bend test/teardown videos every week of differing types/brands of technology. Not only that, but often times he'll get high quality photos of the insides for dBrand to make skins with, so it's typically of no cost to him and ultimately serves that purpose as well as serving as a 3rd party verification of Apple's own durability claims. If anything, Zack's M4 iPad Pro video mainly served to verify that Apple did indeed reinforce the structural design of their iPad Pro line to prevent accidental/unintentional bending during ownership (and of course not built to withstand intentional destruction haha). I think seeing exactly how much torture needs to be inflicted to cause such a catastrophic failure makes me feel better about the long term durability of my latest purchase. This is like the 4th article here in recent times I've read with this slant.. Maybe same writer/editor perhaps?
As for the gym guy... If there was ever a poster child for the case of purchasing AppleCare+ he would it haha. Good on him at least for recognizing the actual danger of lithium ion battery fire and taking the appropriate action at least. That's one expensive roman candle haha.