Regardless of who manufactures an electronic device, to sell it in the U.S. it has pass a number of stringent safety tests. That means we can buy and use the device safe in the knowledge it isn’t going to harm us. What those tests don’t guarantee is that a device will continue to work when damaged.
A couple of kids playing around with an iPod touch have reinforced the fact that if a device is damaged, you should not put it anywhere near your person.
While one films, the other child starts doing experiments on how to break the iPod touch. Running a skateboard over it does nothing, dropping it off a roof also seems to do very little, but hitting it with a bat? Yeah, that works. Hitting it repeatedly with a bat leaves a mess of electronics on the floor, but it’s what happens near the end of the video that’s surprising.
After several hits the iPod explodes leaving a black mark on the road and giving off rather a lot of smoke. It looks to us like the battery had blown and cooked in the casing meaning very high temperatures and a lot of poisonous fumes.
Now while the kids really went to town destroying this device, you do have to wonder how easy it is to cause such an explosion. Does it really take several hits with a bat to achieve, or would dropping it start the process that leads to an explosion? I’d like to think you really have to beat the device to achieve such a reaction, but who knows? Do they actually test for stuff like this?
One thing is very clear: if you damage your mobile device(s) in any serious way, do not put them anywhere near your body or flammable items. It could end in disaster.