Causes of a phone battery to explode and how to avoid it

The accumulator in any device is a bank of electrical energy, in which certain controlled processes take place. If you misuse the battery, intentionally or accidentally damage it, the consequences can be very unpleasant. It should be noted that the majority of batteries use substances harmful to human health. When they are disassembled, destroyed, exploded, harmful elements, liquids and gases come out. As for the batteries of modern phones, they are overwhelmingly lithium. Lithium is an extremely unstable material and can easily ignite in air. Under certain circumstances, the phone battery may even explode. Today we will look at the reasons for this phenomenon, and how to avoid it.

One of the reasons for a battery explosion is a manufacturing defect. Only a scrupulous choice of the seller can save you from this. A manufacturing defect usually makes itself felt immediately after the start of operation. Often a defect manifests itself in a swollen battery. The operation of such a battery should be stopped until it explodes. We advise you to read about.

Large manufacturers have strict quality control systems in their factories to screen out defective batteries. Reputable battery sellers keep an eye on the products on their shelves. Therefore, you should buy a battery for your phone only in approved places. When doing this, always inspect the battery. If you order a battery in an online store, be sure to read the reviews about it.

When inspecting the battery, pay attention to dents, chips, swelling, marks from drops and impacts. Also see that there are no other shape changes. But problems can lie inside without visible external flaws. The fall of the phone, without visible consequences, may appear later.

Of course, battery explosion is not a common occurrence. But the consequences of shocks and falls can manifest itself in a decrease in service life, in a decrease in capacity, etc.

So, when buying a phone battery, pay attention to the following defects:

• Chips;
• Dents;
• Bloating;
• Other shape changes.

It's not a fact that such flaws will cause the battery to explode, but why unnecessary problems?

If your phone battery explodes, then you need to try to extinguish it as soon as possible without panic. Then examine yourself and those around you for injuries. If you are seriously injured, immediately call an ambulance for medical attention. At this moment, you should think about your health and those around you, and not about your phone. An explosion could result in a person being seriously injured.

If the battery in your phone exploded without consequences for your health and those around you, then this is real luck. Then, immediately after extinguishing, you can proceed to inspect the device. The likelihood that the explosion did not damage the phone itself is very small. However, if the cotton was small, then it is possible that the case and the board will not have time to melt. If so, consider yourself doubly lucky. If a battery explosion occurred in a new phone with its correct use, then you can safely carry it to a service center, since this is a warranty case.

During operation, the following reasons may cause the phone battery to explode:

• charging the battery in a room with a high temperature;
• battery use at high operating temperature;
• charging and storing the battery in direct sunlight;
• attempts to open the phone battery in various ways;
• improper operation, deliberate or accidental (ignition, heating in the microwave, etc.);
• In some cases, an explosion can cause the battery to not charge properly without the phone.

Real cases of phone battery explosion among users

Don't be intimidated too much as phone battery explosions are not common. This mainly happens when the user deliberately tries to cause an explosion, in the event of improper disassembly or poor-quality battery. But such cases occur periodically and are not something from the realm of fantasy.

Cases of phone battery explosions have been regularly occurring since the second half of the 2000s. Right from the moment when they became widespread in mobile gadgets. Since then, reports of battery explosions in phones, tablets and laptops have regularly appeared in various media. Here are some of them.

In China, in 2007, it was reported that a mobile phone battery exploded in a pocket of a smelter's work.

A couple of years ago, a similar incident occurred in Kazakhstan. There, a battery of a Samsung Galaxy S2 smartphone exploded in a girl's pocket. After the ignition and explosion of the battery, the girl's jeans caught fire. As a result, the child received a serious burn to his leg.

In Finland, a local woman was not injured in the explosion of a Nokia battery. She dropped the battery, as a result of which it was discharged and did not gain capacity on the next charge. After disconnecting from the charger, the battery became hot, swollen and exploded.

In Finland, a few years ago, the owner of a Samsung phone exploded when the phone fell to the floor. Moreover, the explosion was so strong that the floor was badly burned at the place of the fall.

Quite a lot of cases of Nokia and Samsung batteries explosions were recorded in Vietnam, India and other countries of the Asian region. In addition, there are even more cases of explosion of fake Chinese batteries. But it's not just Chinese and Korean phone batteries that explode. There are quite a few examples when the batteries of iPhone, iPad and other top-class products exploded.

For example, in France in recent years, several dozen cases of iPhone battery explosions have been recorded. Several devices exploded right in the hands of their owners. Some were seriously injured. The flying debris hit them in the face. In the UK, an Apple iPod Touch battery explosion was recently reported.

Of course, compared to the number of normally operated batteries, the number of explosions is a drop in the ocean. So don't panic. But you need to understand why this is happening. Everything is explained by the materials used in lithium batteries and the processes that take place in them.

Batteries for phones are available in more and more assortments, of various sizes and shapes. Manufacturers try to reduce the size of batteries as much as possible with high capacities, as this allows mobile devices to be thinner and more elegant.

But problems follow from this. Due to the fact that the main components of the battery (electrodes) are located as close to each other as possible, with the slightest violation of the shape, electrochemical processes are disrupted. This could result in fire and explosion.

As a rule, fire and explosion of the phone battery occurs due to a short circuit (short circuit). The battery is designed with a separator separating the positive and negative electrodes. If it is damaged (as a result of shock, manufacturing defects, puncture, heating, etc.), then a short circuit occurs and a strong heating follows. Lithium-type batteries are very energy consuming and lithium is an extremely reactive metal. So, as a result of a breakthrough of the separator, instant heating, ignition and energy release as a result of an explosion occur.

At the same time, this extreme activity of lithium is very useful in creating high-capacity batteries (lithium-ion and lithium-polymer). Alkali metals of the first group of the periodic table (sodium, potassium), which include lithium, have a high reactivity. These metals can easily catch fire when exposed to air. In addition, the interaction of some of these metals with water can cause an explosion. All of these factors explain the explosion of telephone batteries.

Attention! Above were photographs and videos of battery explosions. Do not try to reproduce what was shown there. Even if you are experimenting with an old battery, consider that fire and explosion will damage the surrounding objects. And most importantly, you can cause irreparable harm to your health.

How Phones Explode July 20th, 2014

As a result of the fall, the phone's battery was discharged and the owner turned it on for recharging, but the battery stubbornly refused to charge. After turning off the charger, the phone's battery suddenly began to heat up and swell, and then the device exploded. As a result of the explosion, the woman was not injured.

Last July, Kimmo Piilola replaced the battery on his Samsung phone. He did this at the manufacturer's authorized service center in the city of Porvoo. That same evening, his new battery exploded - so badly that it burned the wooden floor on which the phone had fallen. “The room was filled with smoke in a few minutes,” says Kimmo Piilola.

This is how it happens. So why do phones explode?

In the overwhelming majority of cases, modern society depends on power consumption, including options when energy is consumed “on the fly”. Lithium-ion technology batteries have been a big part of the mobile revolution, and they are appearing more and more in cars and even airplanes. So this means that modern power supplies are completely safe, right? In fact, the Boeing 787 proves that lithium-ion batteries can still explode sporadically, as do incidents where phone batteries catch fire in the user's hands. Why is this important problem still not resolved?

Battery technology has been tried and tested over the years, but no incredible technology breakthroughs have occurred since then. Instead, we see the same batteries, which come in different sizes and shapes, with the manufacturer trying to make the size as small as possible while increasing the capacity. On the one hand, this approach makes the batteries the most productive, although on the other hand, it is this approach that increases the risk of battery failure when something goes wrong.

Standard conditions for using batteries: ambient temperature up to 60 degrees Celsius, without any additional thermal and / or mechanical influences. These ideal conditions will ensure maximum battery life and protect you from unpleasant surprises.

At the same time, the battery should not be in a compressed space, near sources of fire or high temperature, during use, the battery should not be physically deformed, punctured, or even drilled. Because even one of these moments can provoke a battery explosion.

If the battery gets very hot, the electrolyte may catch fire. There are many videos and photos on the Internet that show how serious this is.

The battery usually catches fire due to an internal short circuit. There is a separator that separates the positive and negative electrodes. If a rupture occurs in this layer and the electrodes touch, the battery will heat up very quickly. You may have experienced this effect when you had a 9 volt battery with coins in your pocket. The coin connects the contacts and the battery gets very hot.

Li-ion batteries are very energy intensive and due to problems in the separator they get very hot. This will ignite the electrolyte. As soon as one of the cells is lit, the rest easily flash.

If the production technology has been violated, or a defect has appeared, the battery can easily overheat, as a result of which its internal cells are destroyed in a chain reaction. This process is called "thermal runaway", and it is he who causes most of the "explosion" of batteries, or, less dangerous, a sharp "swelling" of the battery. A defect can be caused by a simple short circuit, or a flaw in the design, which ultimately incorrectly insulates individual cells from heating of neighboring ones.

Any Li-ion battery has a flammable potential as a result of its chemical composition. Lithium is used as an anode in storage batteries because it has an extremely high electrochemical potential. In other words, the lithium ion junction to the electrode produces a lot of energy. The low atomic weight of lithium is also a beneficial factor in reducing battery weight.

While lithium is most effective for producing high-capacity batteries, these same properties give it a high reactivity and a high tendency to exhibit a "thermal runaway" effect. Lithium is an alkali metal, along with sodium, potassium, and the rest of the first group of the periodic table. These elements are not only highly flammable, but also so reactive that adding a few grams of a substance to a container with water can lead to an explosion. Therefore, when a Li-ion battery starts to overheat, the lithium present in it can accelerate the decay of other cells.

In early September, users of the new flagship smartphone Samsung Galaxy Note 7 began to complain massively about phone battery explosions. Samsung has suspended production and is promising a replacement for all buyers. Xaomi smartphones also exploded: the owners received burns.

"Paper" talked with the candidate of technical sciences and leading researcher of the Polytechnic University Maxim Maksimov, who is working on the creation of lithium-ion batteries, about why smartphone batteries still explode in 2016, and how owners should not be harmed by their own technology.

For two weeks it became known about 35 cases of explosion of Samsung Galaxy Note 7. Because of such incidents, a car has already burned down, and a six-year-old child received burns. According to preliminary data from the company, the explosion was caused by a manufacturing defect in the battery. Several airlines, including Aeroflot, allow Galaxy Note 7 owners to use devices on board.

Why do lithium-ion batteries explode?

The explosion hazard of a battery depends on various factors, in particular - on the materials used by the manufacturing companies. Today there is a wide range of battery materials available that differ in both performance and price. Manufacturers decide for themselves which ones are optimal for them.

Explosion issues are relevant because materials may not have been fully qualified to existing standards. As a result, during overloads, processes occur that contribute to the release of energy and gases in batteries, that is, in a closed space, after which an explosion occurs.

One of the main reasons a battery explodes is overcharging. To avoid this, special chips (controllers) are placed on them, which allow you to charge the phone only to a certain voltage: the battery is disconnected from charging, even if the smartphone is still connected to the network. If the electronics fail, the chances of overcharging are high.

Depressurization of batteries can also be one of the causes of fire.

Maxim Maximov, candidate of technical sciences:

In existing cases, it is necessary to look at how and under what circumstances the phones exploded. Perhaps the reason is not even the battery, but microelectronics. For example, the charge-discharge voltage is incorrectly regulated. In such cases, overcharging may occur.

They wrote about my phone model that it explodes. What should I do?

Such a phone must be disposed of, preferably in a specially designated place: batteries contain heavy metals such as cobalt and others that are harmful to the environment.

How do I check if my phone can explode?

Checking the phone in a domestic environment is hardly possible. But if your phone battery is overheating, that's always a bad thing. If during the execution of some processes, for example, playing on the phone, the battery heats up so that you cannot touch it and the temperature reaches 30-40 degrees, you need to contact a specialist.

You can also leave the smartphone to charge for a day and see if it heats up or not. When the battery warms up, it quickly loses its charge, so if the phone starts to discharge faster, this also means that the battery is aging and needs to be replaced. In addition, with dangerous heating, the external state of the battery changes: if the smartphone has "swelling" (your flat smartphone has ceased to be), you need to pay attention to this.

Could the explosion of smartphones be caused by attempts by manufacturers to increase the capacity of batteries?

Performance is increased by installing more powerful processors. If the power consumption processes are not optimized correctly, the processor needs more power. At high rates of energy release, it heats up. That is, heating can be associated with increased productivity. And uncontrolled heating can really lead to a fire and even an explosion.

What can I do to reduce battery overheating?

Handling recommendations are standard: fully charge and fully discharge once a week or once a month. And use a smartphone in the range of 30-80% of its capacity. Unfortunately, there are no absolute rules that can help determine whether your phone will explode or not.

Batteries are one of the main components of modern electronic gadgets. In recent years, engineers have achieved significant increases in capacity while keeping the same size or even smaller. This has been achieved through the use of sophisticated technologies that provide the highest battery charge density. However, now it seems that manufacturers have run into a barrier, which can be dangerous to cross.

What is your battery made of

Most electronic gadgets nowadays use lithium-ion batteries. They consist of electrodes placed in a sealed case with current collector terminals. The charge carrier here is the positively charged lithium ion, which is reflected in the name of the battery.

The characteristics and performance of lithium-ion batteries are highly dependent on the chemical composition of the materials used. Initially, metal lithium was used as negative plates, then coal coke was used. Nowadays, graphite is most often used.

In addition to the purely "chemical" filling, the battery also contains electronic components. A charge controller is built into its case, which protects the battery from overvoltage during charging. The same component is able to monitor the temperature of the battery in order to turn it off if it overheats.

Why do batteries explode?

The most dangerous element in battery design is electrolyte, which is extremely reactive. If there are errors in the design of the battery or a technological defect, then the battery case may not withstand. Then the hot electrolyte will get out, which, in turn, will lead to the ignition of the gadget. Let's take a look at the main reasons why this can happen.

Overheating and overcharging

More recently, this has been one of the most common causes of battery failure. Due to the breakdown of the controller, the current continues to flow even when the battery is already charged. The battery heats up and then ignites.

It should be noted that overheating and ignition of the battery as a result of "thermal breakdown" can occur very quickly, in just a few minutes. Fortunately, battery monitoring systems are becoming more sophisticated. If you avoid frankly cheap products, then this type of damage will hardly threaten you.

Mechanical damage

Modern gadgets are becoming thinner and lighter, so some batteries use special lightweight designs, which, unfortunately, cannot always provide sufficient strength. If the partition between the electrodes is damaged in the battery, a short circuit will occur, which will lead to instant heating and ignition of the battery.

The thin outer shell of a battery can be a nuisance too. The fact is that when the battery is charged, a rather large pressure can arise in it. If the manufacturer, in pursuit of weight reduction, neglected the safety rules, then such a battery can also explode sooner or later.

How to avoid battery problems

No one, of course, can give a hundred percent guarantee that you won't come across a defective or poorly designed battery. However, following the guidelines below can greatly reduce the risk of fire or explosion of the battery in your smartphone.

• Try to avoid overtly budget models and unknown manufacturers. In an effort to win the price race, they try to save on literally everything, including the battery. The discrepancy between the actual and declared capacity is far from the worst thing. It is much worse when there is no thermal sensor in the battery or a charge controller from the last century is used.
• Use only the supplied charger. If it is lost or damaged, do not buy cheap Chinese chargers, but prefer a product from a trusted manufacturer. Pay attention to the recommended charge current for your gadget.
• If you need to replace it, look for the original battery. Yes, compatible batteries can cost several times less, but these savings could literally burn your smartphone as a result.
• When charging your smartphone, be careful not to overheat. Free it from the cover, remove it from under the pillow and do not cover it with a blanket. This is especially true for new smartphones with fast charging function.
• Try to protect the battery from mechanical damage. It is clear that you will not play football with it, but even a banal fall to the floor can be fatal for the battery. If you find signs of deformation (swelling, distortion), replace the battery with a new one.

Have you ever caught fire or short-circuited the battery? Maybe even exploded? Let us know in the comments.

To the huge list of dangers that await a modern person literally at every step, one more has been added - the danger of an explosion of your mobile phone.

The Internet is replete with messages about phone explosions right in the hands of their owners, while talking, playing or chatting on social networks. But maybe the danger is greatly exaggerated? Let's take a look at which phones explode and why.

Which phones explode the most?

Having studied the statistics of reports of phone explosions, one can come to the conclusion that literally all brands and models of phones are explosive. Recently, attention has been focused on the products of Samsung, which even had to withdraw all Galaxy Note 7 phones from the sale in the wake of panic.

But literally right there, the media flooded with reports of explosions of the iPhone 7, as well as other models and iPads. By the way, it is not only phones that explode - tablets of different brands are subject to the same "disease".

What can explode in a modern phone?

Watching a video of a mobile phone explosion, you might think that it is filled with explosives, which can spontaneously go off at any time. In a sense, it is, because there are still no phones that could work without batteries.

The battery is the only explosive part of any phone. Under normal conditions, of course, it cannot explode, but if the unfavorable factors coincide, the processes taking place inside the battery are furiously accelerated, which leads to an explosion.

How does a phone battery explode?

Today, almost all phone models, regardless of their brand, use lithium-ion batteries, the action of which is based on the ionization of lithium atoms in the electrolyte.

An electrochemical cell filled with a solution of organic lithium salts is separated by a porous polymer separator. In one part there is an anode, in the other - a cathode. The separator prevents direct contact of the electrodes, so the electrochemical reaction proceeds slowly as lithium ions seep through the separator.


If the separator is damaged, a short circuit occurs between the anode and cathode. The electrochemical process is activated, accelerating hundreds of times, due to which the protective layer of the anode decomposes. The lithium of the anode enters into an electrolytic reaction with the release of gaseous hydrocarbons - methane, ethylene, ethane and others. The pressure of the gases leads to the rupture of the case, and oxygen gets inside, igniting the electrolyte, after which the battery explodes.

What can lead to an explosion?

In principle, modern batteries are made sufficiently resistant to adverse influences, however, manufacturers, of course, cannot foresee all life situations. Most often, the battery fails and explodes:

- after the phone has been dropped due to damage to the separator due to impact;

- after folding the phone in your pocket or backpack;

- due to heating over 60 degrees Celsius - the limit established by the technology of lithium-ion batteries;

- after long-term operation, which led to dendroid growth of metallic lithium through the pores of the separator.

Most often, batteries that have been in operation for a long time explode, with a noticeable change in the geometric shape (swelling of the walls). In addition, a violation of the battery production technology can lead to an increase in the likelihood of an explosion, which, unfortunately, is not so rare in small factories in China. Therefore, when replacing the battery, it is better not to save money by buying cheap "noname" products, and choose batteries from the original or licensed manufacturer.

Why do Samsung Galaxy Note 7 and iPhone 7 batteries explode?

Paying attention to the explosions of the batteries of phones from well-known manufacturers, you can see that both models are waterproof, i.e. ventilation of the case is very difficult. This means that the natural cooling of the battery practically does not work.

The likelihood of acceleration of the electrolytic reaction due to overheating increases significantly, especially when the phone is actively used for watching / shooting videos, playing games or searching the Internet. In addition, one cannot exclude a deterioration in the quality of components due to the desire to reduce the cost of production - literally all manufacturers are now guilty of this.


Do not overheat your phone, do not drop it and protect it from deforming loads on the case, replace the battery in time, choosing products of the original brand for this. Following these simple rules will reduce the risk of explosion for your phone to almost zero.