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The government can blow up your smartphoneJust know that your smart phone has a lot more potential power than an old pager. Here is a video of an iPhone being induced to explode.
Some people don’t think it’s possible for a phone to explode in this way without the external power source. I’m not so sure of that. Whether or not it is possible to remotely hack a device and overload it in such a way to make the thermal runaway happen explosively is very much up for debate.
I can say for certain that it is possible in some use cases with similar form factor battery designs. I would also say that if this is known to phone and battery manufacturers, they will go above and beyond to keep that quiet, and for good reason.
People think that when li-ion batteries overheat they simply melt, but it’s all a matter of how fast the reaction happens. For instance, in cylindrical cell EV batteries, often the mitigation tactic to surround the cells in a medium that will slow, not stop the reaction. When a cell like that goes off, there really isn’t anything you can do to stop it.
In the case of a mobile device, they control this problem with a series of failsafes and fuses. My questions is what happens if you can remotely bypass those? Can you remotely bypass them? If you can, then I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that you could rapidly overclock a battery and get an explosion.
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Stephen Stone
