Off-Brand iPhone Charger Shocks Man into a Coma

Photo via Phil Roeder/Flickr

I remember my first cell phone coming with a stern warning that I should never use it while it was plugged into the wall. I?m not sure if my latest phone came with the same warning, because I used that first phone and every single one since while it was charging, up to and including my iPhone.

But a 30-year-old man in Beijing plugged his iPhone into the wall and was electrocuted badly enough to end up in a coma in a hospital. After plugging in his iPhone 4, Wu Jian Tong shouted to his sister that he was being shocked and she pulled the off-brand charger out of the wall. The shock was bad enough that Wu became unresponsive and wasn?t breathing when the ambulance arrived. He remains in a coma.

It takes 35 volts to feel a shock, but mobile phones only have an output of around three-five volts, so the danger of getting electrocuted by your phone when it's unplugged is pretty slim. If something were to go wrong while the phone is charging, Chinese outlets have a 220 volt output, which is roughly twice what we have here in North America. Early reports state that Wu?s wall charger was a third party, non-Apple made charger.

Just last week a Chinese flight attendant was killed by the shock she received while talking on her plugged-in iPhone 5. Her sister said that she was using the charger that came with the phone, but articles covering the story point out that fake Apple stores abound in China.

Apple?s iPhone cables have always been specific to Apple products and the computer giant therefore has sold them at a frustratingly high mark up. This creates the space for a thriving market to offer non-Apple made imitations for much cheaper.

Apple, of course, knows this, and encourages other manufacturers to get in the game via a licensing program, which allows companies to boast that an accessory was ?Made for iPhone,? in exchange for paying a licensing fee. Of course, there were still companies willing to skip the licensing fee too?to pass the savings on to you, the consumer, no doubt?and just rip off the 30-pin iPhone/Pod cable.

With the iPhone 5?s new cord, the smaller ?Lightning? cable, Apple made copying the cable much harder, via its smaller size and an authentication chip. The cables are also still expensive, so there is still an incentive to sell imitations at a discount. Is it a faulty imitation that is at fault in the death of the flight attendant?

Apple, for its part, has agreed to comply with all investigations, while remaining confidently at a distance from any culpability. "It was with great sadness we learned through press reports that a Beijing customer was injured while using a 'knock off' or counterfeit charger and we are looking into this further," Apple said in a release.?

Even if the brand mark-up now seems like an actual value-adder--the brand has too much to lose by making faulty, and especially fatal merchandise. But should Apple be concerned about this off-brand problem? It's only natural for a company to want to protect its property, and it seems naive to insist that they make their cables easier to counterfeit as some matter of public health. Still, counterfeit cables, like counterfeit Apple stores, aren't going away. How far does a company's obligation extend?

Wu's condition is stable, in a coma, in a Beijing hospital.

Source: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/off-brand-iphone-charger-shocks-man-into-a-coma

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