Smoking, glowing iPhone 4 causes airplane scare

Regional Express (REX), Australian largest independent regional airline, had to extinguish a glowing iPhone 4, emitting “dense smoke” while a flight from Lismore to Sydney. A flight attendant extinguished the smoking smartphone and no one was injured during the incident. The situation, obviously, has sparked concerns over the handset's battery. The defected device was the GSM version of the iPhone 4, according to the model number of the device.

This issue, probably, caused by battery overheating wasn’t a unique one for Apple's devices. As far as we know, the company recently initiated a replacement program for the first-generation iPod nano due to potential battery overheating issues earlier this month, although Apple notes that the problem is very rare, but the likelihood of overheating does increase over time.

One of the biggest consumer electronic battery scares in recent years occurred in 2006. Microscopic metal particles were found in 9.6 million lithium-ion Sony batteries that the company had to recall. Such batteries were also used in Apple’s iBook and PowerBook G4 and Apple recalled 1.8 million batteries.