Phone Suddenly Turns Into A Fireball In Repairman's Hands

The shocking moment was caught on CCTV camera, with the footage captured in a mobile phone repair shop in the Basiskele district of Kocaeli province in Turkey.

In the video the repairman, identified as Hulusi Ayman, can be seen in the bottom right of the screen taking the customer's phone - of an unknown model and brand - out of its case, while another employee monitors the situation.

Ayman starts to take a look at the phone when it suddenly bursts into flame - obviously, the worried repairman drops it on the glass counter in front of him, as the device continues to burn.

The phone then gets knocked to the floor by Ayman as the other employee fetches a kettle full of water in an attempt to extinguish the flames.

The fire starts to sizzle out as the water is poured over it - well, you'd hope so - and both Ayman and his co-worker seem relieved.

Turkish media has reported the situation occurred when a customer simply brought the device in to have its battery replaced.

Luckily, there are no reports of anyone being injured during the incident.

The spontaneous fireball was said to be caused by something called 'thermal runaway'.

Thermal runaway is a kind of uncontrolled positive feedback that occurs when a device has an increase in temperature, leading to conditions which cause further increases in temperature and often prompting destructive results - hence the incident in the phone shop.

This can happen if a phone - or other device - is subject to such things as overcharging, overheating, physical damage or even just a fault during the manufacturing process.

Twitter user 'Rocky Mohemedali', real name Rahel Mohamad, shared photos of a fairly destroyed-looking handset with the caption claiming that the phone 'got hot' while updating and then exploded.

Speaking to Gadget 360, Mohamad said: "This year early January I bought the iPhone and have been using it normally."

As he went to update the iOS, he put his phone on charge. He added that while it was charging, 'dark grey smoke started coming from the phone'.

"The update was completed and as soon as the phone turned on it started to smoke and caught fire," he said.

Ouch, not ideal at all.