Teen’s iPod Nano Explodes Violently During Sync

The frightening aftermath of a sync with iTunes.

By now, most everyone has heard of the rare incidents where iPhones explode violently, in airplanes, in walls, and even in peoples' pockets.  Yet another explosion has occurred, as a friend of mine had his iPod Nano (Fifth Generation) explode right in front of him while syncing music from his computer.

He was not doing anything out of the ordinary; it was not plugged in for an unusual amount of time.  As he responded, "I had plugged it to my computer for about 20 minutes, and I heard a pop.  [I] looked at it, and the screen was broken out.  After that, there were small pops, which was more glass and part of the iPod breaking.”  As the explosion commenced, glass and parts shattered and flew from the iPod.



He responded by doing the best thing possible: unplugging it.  However, it continued to pop.  He let it lay there around half an hour and even more of the screen popped.  This means that the issue was most likely happening in the internals of the iPod and was not a simple surge from his computer.  It was most likely caused by the rechargeable lithium ion battery, which has been know to explode in past incidents.  One incident like this occurred to a woman’s iPhone 4 on an Australian flight.

No one was injured during this violent explosion, but as the owner stated, “What if I would have been holding this up to my face?  That would have been bad.”  Is this just a freak accident or a defect of the batteries housed in the Fifth Generation?  It is hard to tell now, but as these portable music devices age, if there is an issue with the design, more of these incidents will be sure to happen.  As a dedicated Apple fan, I hope this never occurs with any of my devices, purchased with my hard-earned cash.  More importantly, if it does happen to one of my devices, I hope that I am not holding it.

While these incidents are extremely rare because of the high-quality of Apple products, there are so many iDevices out there that it is frightening to think of just how many may have the potential to explode.