China’s Consumer Council, which is a consumer group that’s linked to the Beijing government, revealed that it received a total of 8 complaints from Apple customers across the country that their iPhone 6 models caught fire due to what they believed to be faulty batteries.

Details are sketchy for the time being, but the consumer group says that all devices “spontaneously” burst into flames, even though they were in perfect condition.

On the other hand, Apple says that it already investigated these phones and it found external physical damage on all of them, so the fire is a direct result of this factor.

“We appreciate that customers are more concerned than ever about the performance and safety of batteries in their mobile devices,” Apple said in a statement, adding that those experiencing issues with their iPhones should contact the company or visit an Apple store.

While this isn’t the first report of iPhones catching fire (in China or across the world), it’s hard to tell who is right here, as the consumer group only claims the iPhone 6 was involved in these spontaneous fires.

Physical damage caused by bending?

For what it’s worth, the iPhone 6 was affected by the famous bendgate, which caused the devices to bend under strong pressure, thus causing physical damage to the phone and possibly leading to a battery malfunction which, in its turn, could cause a fire. If this is the case, Apple is indeed right when it says that external factors caused the explosions, but it’s not known if bending was the source of the physical damage or not.

This report, however, comes only a few days after Apple started a global recall of iPhone 6s models that came with a bad battery causing the devices to turn off unexpectedly. More recently, Apple admittedthat more phones than initially believed might be impacted, saying that it plans to release an iOS update that would help determine how widespread the problem actually is.

On the other hand, Apple says that only the iPhone 6s is impacted by this unexpected shutdown, but with China pressuring the firm to look into these reports, don’t be too surprised if more models are included in the recall.

Source: softmedia