Mini-Chat
By Richard Spillett
Published: 16:01, 9 April 2014 | Updated: 07:45, 10 April 2014
Holly Hewett is warning others not to charge their phones overnight after her Samsung smartphone caught fire
Holly Hewett is warning others not to charge their phones overnight after her Samsung smartphone caught fire
A woman has told of her terror after she woke up to find her phone on fire beside her bed.
Holly Hewett, 25, was asleep when she was woken by a 'sizzling sound' and the smell of burning.
She looked down and saw her Samsung Galaxy S4 smouldering as it charged on the carpeted floor next to her.
Miss Hewett grabbed the smartphone and ran to the bathroom and threw it in the sink.
The civil servant said: 'I woke up at 4.30am when my boyfriend got up to go to work and looked at my phone to check the time.
'I noticed it was running low on battery so I plugged it in and put it on charge.
'At about 5am I checked the time again then rolled over and went back to sleep, but within about 10 minutes of that I heard a sizzling sound.
'Even though it was dark I could smell the smoke. I picked it up and the screen sparked.
'As I walked to the bathroom the battery fell out of the casing at the back onto the floor.
'I didn’t burn myself but there's a hole in the carpet where it scorched it. The smell was awful, so I opened a window.'
She added: 'I was on my own and panicked because I'd got no house phone so I didn’t know how to contact anyone to let them know what had happened.
'In the end, after unplugging everything, I drove to my dad's house.'
WHY DO SOME PHONES BURST INTO FLAMES?
There are many reasons a phone could burst into flames.
Lots of manufacturers have blamed knock off charger suppliers, who cut corners in their manufacturing.
However, mostly it has to do with the quality of the capacitor and circuit protector in the inner workings of the phone.
If these are faulty, failing to either keep the current in the phone to a low voltage, or failing to keep the hot circuits from the plastic phone coating, there can be an exponential increase in heat in the phone.
This may lead to the capacitor breaking down and sending several hundred volts of electricity into the battery.
This is often more than the lithium based batteries can take, and they either expand due to the bending and melting of the battery's shape, or burn up and catch fire, due to the increased heat inside the phone.
The incident happened at Miss Hewett's flat in Kemsley, Kent around 5.15am last Friday morning.
She said: 'I've never had anything like this happen to me before. It had only been charging for about 50 minutes, if that.
'I was extremely lucky. I'd warn others not to put their phones on charge while they are sleeping.
'Luckily I'm not a very deep sleeper, any sound usually wakes me up, but it could have been a different story.'
It is not the first time smartphones and tablets have been reported to suddenly catch fire.
Last June, a man in Hong Kong claimed his flat was destroyed by fire after his Galaxy S4 burst into flames while he was playing the game Love Machine.
A month later, Swiss teenager Fanny Schlatter, 18, suffered second and third degree burns when her smartphone apparently exploded in her pocket.
Last year, a brand new iPad Air exploded in flames while charging in a Vodafone mobile phone store in Camberra, Australia, store workers said.
Miss Hewett threw the device into her sink after she was woken by it smouldering on her bedroom floor
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z2yTgOV1dg
