Apple Watch Is On Fire!
As with any mobile electronic product ever, Apple Watch derives its power from batteries. And sometimes, batteries fail catastrophically, causing injury, property damage, and other ills that users never expect. Usually, the culprit is easy to identify. Early in the Apple Watch cycle, there were various reports of its heart rate monitor burning folks’s wrists, and there were countless tales of allergic reactions to the materials used. Unfortunate though they may be, these are both inevitabilities in mass market mobile devices, and they ought to be accepted as par for the course (provided they dont occur at any abnormally high rate).
There is a new case going around lately, however, that seems a bit different. Per Ben Lovejoy at 9to5Mac:
Danish news site Ekstra Bladet reports that a man received severe burns from his Apple Watch, and has been waiting for several weeks for the results of an Apple investigation. Photos accompanying the report (below, not for weak stomaches) seem to show two long burn marks on the wrist of Jørgen Mouritzen, together with what appear to be burn marks on the strap.
Mouritzen and a witness to the event say that they are both certain the heat came from the Watch itself and not from any external source…
Here are some of the photos:
Ouch.
Curiously, though, the burns dont appear to be on the Apple Watch chassis itself, where the battery — likely the only source of such a heat-generating failure — resides. Instead, these burns appear to be along the edges of the Milanese Loop, situated near the Apple Watch body. Additionally, the anchor points of the Band dont look to be charred in any way. While Mouritzen and his witness claim this wasn’t the result of an external heat source, it sure looks like it was. I’m no electrical engineer or anything, but how any heat could be channeled from the body of the Apple Watch (without said body heating up enough to burn flesh) to two distinct, symmetrical points under only one side of the device indicates that, for whatever reason, that spot of the Band was heated enough to cause a reaction on this elderly gentleman’s skin.
Heck, maybe he was doing his best “long-haul trucker” and left his arm out in the sun too long. Maybe someone had a gag with a lighter at Mouritzen’s expense. Or maybe the whole thing’s legit. (A tangent thought: Depending on the various medications or skin treatments Mouritzen might be taking, such heat’s damaging effects could be exacerbated dramatically. My old man suffers from manageable skin cancer, and the frequent treatments he receives definitely make his skin more prone to many kinds of painful reactions, particularly those caused by heat. As a teenager, I took acne medication, and heat/sun exposure was a huge problem.)
Anyhow, this one’s a mystery.
Luckily, I dont need to solve it, because I wear a Sport Band.