Erick Johnson, 29, from Long Island, suffered third-degree burns on his leg after his iPhone exploded in his pocket on Valentine's Day.
Johnson spent the next 10 days in a hospital unit while recovering from the burns, and he said the incident was still a shock to him. His iPhone 5C spontaneously exploded after he bent over to get his keys from his pocket.
"And just like an instant burn, my leg just starts going on fire, try to get it out, can't get it out. I was literally jumping up and down trying to get the phone out of my pocket, but I think the phone melted my pockets shut so I couldn't get into it and I had to rip my pants off and throw the pants to the side. A couple of people actually said they could smell my body burning," Johnson said in an interview with WABC-TV.
Smartphones usually explode when it is used with a third-party charger, but in Johnson's case, he said that he charged his iPhone using an original Apple cable. He is now suing Apple for the said incident.
"I just want my leg back to what it was you know?" Johnson said.
Mike Della, Johnson's lawyer, has reached out to Apple but has not received any feedback yet.
"Even if this only happened this one time, that's one time too many," Della told the New York Daily News. "What if this happened to a child?"
Exploding iPhones are not new. In Maine, an iPhone 5C burned the back pocket of an eighth grader after it overheated, causing minor burns. Possible reasons that can cause the battery to explode or malfunction include overheating, overcharging and applying too much pressure on the device.
