On a flight from Lismore to Sydney, Australia one passenger's iPhone 4S apparently began smoking and glowing red. The airline, Regional Express, has been quick to point out that the phone never posed much of a risk to the plane or its passengers and no one was hurt, but the phone did have to be extinguished and turned over to the country's aviation authorities.
While Apple has yet to say exactly what could have caused this particular iPhone 4S to break in such an original way, there has been problems like this with the iPod. A few years back, Apple was even concerned enough with the batteries of the iPod Nanos that they issued a recall. Apparently the worry there was that the batteries could overheat and actually cause a fire given the right circumstances.
Along with the red glow that this particular iPhone 4S was emitting, there was apparently a significant amount of dense smoke. There is no word as to whether this was an actually iPhone 4S, or one of the knockoffs that are prevalent on the Asian continent. Even if it was an official Apple iPhone 4S, there doesn't seem to be a huge amount of reason for concern that this will happen again. It isn't like there has been a recent rash of iPhones exploding in mid-flight.
Considering the number of iPhone users who will be traveling this holiday season, it does bear taking a bit of a look to see if this could become the next bothersome problem for a company that prides itself on high quality products.
