French consumer groups are investigating a disturbing bout of recent reports concerning iPhone 3GS models that have exploded or burst into flames spontaneously.
A 96-year old Granny, Madame Hilda La Kunte, from the Paris suburbs, suffered third degree burns and shrapnel trauma when her iPhone exploded while she was answering one of her regular ‘121 Adult Chat’ phone sex calls, according to the current issue of Le Merde magazine.
Consumers across Europe have reported similar problems with a new batch of iPhones just shipped from Apple’s recently-opened ‘Outsource’ manufacturing plant in Somalia, prompting an EU investigation.
Apple’s Mogadishu spokeswoman Fellattia O’Dinga told reporters that they were aware of the reports and just waiting to receive the cremated remains of the warranty-covered handsets from affected customers – or their surviving relatives.
Ms. O’Dinga denied reports the firm has been trying to hush-up cases of iPhones and iPods heating up and bursting into flames or exploding by threatening the complaining clients with legal action – or a visit from “some very nasty violent men who’ll break your legs.”
Jacko Scruntford and his daughter Blingie, from Liverpool, have accused the firm of trying to silence them with a gagging order after the child’s iPod exploded – killing her pet guinea pig and blowing up the garden shed – and the family sought a refund – plus compensation for damages.
Apple UK reportedly offered to reimburse the cost of the iPod and fork out for a new guinea pig and a shed – but only if they kept the terms of the settlement confidential and signed the company’s obligatory ‘Blabber-Mouth’ agreement first.
The European Commission applied its Rapex system to issue an alert to the 27 EU member states about the potential China Syndrome problems with the iPhone 3GS models.
Rapex is the EU rapid alert system for dangerous consumer products which has halted sales – and forced recalls – of various products categorised as hazardous over recent months – such as ‘Home Brew Headbanger lager kits and the Albanian-manufactured Pikey Pete’s Tanning Beds.
A cosmopolitan gaggle of top rank boffins and anoraks were assembled for an emergency crisis meeting in Brussels last week to investigate the problem independently for the International Atomic Energy Agency after one of their weapons inspectors in South Ossetia alerted staff during a telephone call to his Vienna office that his iPhone was heating up – then reached a critical mass and exploded in a mega-nuclear chain reaction – devastating several square kilometres of a prime real estate landfill site.
The Brussels crisis team have so far concluded that the Apple device’s unique new ‘sandwich-build’ dilithium crystal and plutonium long-life (sic) batteries could be the source of the problem – and further quoted a history of similar glitches with dilithium layering technology encountered by the Constitution-class Starship warp drive systems in the early 1970’s episodes of Star Trek.