Apple Points Finger At External Physical Damage As Root Cause Of iPhone 6 Battery Fires In China

Hot on the heels of Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 exploding in certain cases came a number of stories of other smartphones following suit. The biggest of those is with Apple's iPhone, and in particular, the two-year-old iPhone 6.

At least eight cases in China arose from consumer iPhones that caught fire, and as you'd expect, Apple took the complaints very seriously (especially given the timing). After its research, the Cupertino company established that the phones only caught fire due to external physical damage, not a fault of the product itself.

The company's official statement reads, "The units we've analyzed so far have clearly shown that external physical damage happened to them which led to the thermal event." This could be taken as an admission that under the right circumstances, even Apple's own phones can suffer something as catastrophic as a fire. It's not clear how much damage these particular phones sustained, but given we've heard of just 8 cases in China, where millions of iPhones have been sold, we'd have to imagine that these phones didn't suffer from regular wear and tear.

Still, the news isn't great for Apple, as it's already battling dwindling sales in the Asian country, largely thanks to a bevy of competitors in the country that are delivering more affordable high-performance Android phones.

This latest incident comes after Apple admitted that some iPhone 6s smartphones were manufactured with a battery defect. The company is offering free replacements for affected customers in these cases (as long as their serial numbers are included in the recall list).