A woman from Sydney, Australia recently raised alarm bells on the Apple iPhone 7 when she publicly claimed on social media that she suffered severe burns after falling asleep while holding her charging iPhone 7.
Critics have come out not to defend the American tech giant but to say that sleeping on a charging smartphone, regardless whether it is an iPhone or an Android device, is not advisable.
Apple has been very clear on its iPhone user guide not to handle or sleep with a charging iPhone. It cited that prolonged contact with a charging iPhone is dangerous.
There is always the risk of incurring an accident. They also think that what happened to the Australian lady with the name of Melanie Tan Pelaez was an isolated incident and does not generally apply to all the current flagship smartphone of the American tech giant.
After she reported the incident to her retailer, Apple eventually offered to give Melanie with a replacement phone but she refused to accept it, reports The Sydney Morning Herald.
In the Apple iPhone user guide, the American tech giant said that no reasonable user would expect the device to get so hot as to burn them. It also cited that iPhones, and other smartphones for that matter, will shut off automatically if they overheat, due to being confined or being exposed to direct sunlight or another heat source.
If the Apple iPhone 7 was really the culprit for the burns suffered by Pelaez, critics were one is assessing that the device may have some kind of malfunction or other factors which are clearly isolated as her case seems to be the only one officially reported on that particular side of Australia.
Narrating the incident on Facebook
Melanie Tan Pelaez made known her unfortunate experience with the Apple iPhone 7 on her Facebook page where she posted a picture of her red and blistered arm and issued a warning to others to keep their phones well away from their beds.
She went on to narrate how it happened. She said that she recently purchased an Apple iPhone 7 and accidentally fell asleep with her arm on her phone whilst it was charging. She said that she was woken up by sudden pain, pins, and needles, numbness, and shortness of breath. She also said that she was not sure what had caused her injury at first and thought that there was something wrong with her medically.
Pelaez also stated that she has been an iPhone user since the beginning and have never had an issue or concern of burning while charging, so she thought that it was really scary and disappointing that something like this happened to her and can also happen to someone else.
Incidentally, what made the accident riskier for Melanie is the fact that she is actually 15 weeks pregnant.
.
She then went to a hospital emergency department after the accident where they ran tests on her heart and blood. Doctors said she had been burnt by a foreign object and advised her to check her bed to see what had caused it. She and her husband then matched the markings on her arm to her phone and charger.
Too long to act on her complaint
When she took the burnt Apple iPhone 7 to the Apple Store, the people there said that there is no way the phone could have done such to her.
There was no action from Apple even as the pain on her arm become more and more severe and the burnt mark more distinctive.
.
After contacting Apple’s executive team through its website, Melanie’s phone was flown to the US for testing.
She continued to see her GP and a plastic surgeon to address scarring as three weeks went by without hearing from Apple.