SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Explosion / rupture

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20171127-739D2-2147395030. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: Apple Apple iPad 2 (Apple iPad II). Incident: My 9 year-old daughter was using our iPad (2nd generation). While using the Apple iPad, playing games, the iPad became extremely hot and violently burst open. It scared my daughter and she brought me the iPad, crying because of the disturbing nature of the failure. The device was not plugged into any power source at the time of the incident. I observed the residual heat in the aluminum housing and also that the screen and some other components had "popped off"." The inner LED display was cracked and small bits of the (glass?) LED display were loose inside of the device; some were ejected from the device when it burst open. I observed that the two (I had later come to understand) batteries were swollen into the shape of pillows, obviously they had expanded outside of the volume meant to contain them. I brought the device to the local Apple store where I was told that this type of failure could (paraphrasing) happen at any time, to any battery powered device. I was unsatisfied by their seeming disregard for the safety issues and proceeded to contact Apple directly over their internet portal. Frankly speaking, they seemed unconcerned about the failure. I sent pictures, and told me that their safety engineer explained that since the unit was outside the warrantee there was nothing that they could do. They did not request the device as to evaluate possible failure modes, nor did they explain what caused this. They seemed to be aware that this failure mode was infrequent but common.