The phone charging under the pillow caught fire. The owner was very lucky

The smartphone is pressed to the mattress with a pillow and plugged into the socket for many hours. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, and in this case it actually came close. An Internet user who showed the effects of charging a smartphone at night under the pillow is glad that nothing happened to him and there was no fire in the house.

The phone charging under the pillow caught fire. The owner was very lucky

The situation was described by , who was the first to reach the Facebook user’s story. Mr. Piotr – as he himself admits – was very lucky because he only suffered minor burns to his hands. In the morning he woke up to the smell of burning plastic. He found a burnt phone and a burnt pillow and duvet in the bed. As we can see in the photos he published, the smartphone (iPhone 11 Pro) was completely destroyed.

The Internet user admitted that he fell asleep in the evening, leaving his smartphone plugged in for charging under the pillow. Moreover, Mr. Piotr did not use the original charging cable (the charging cube itself was original). Many Internet users in the comments admitted that they also leave their phone connected to charging overnight, and sometimes keep the device in bed or under the pillow. Many of them admitted that after reading the post, they would not leave their smartphone this way again. Others commented that pressing a pillow against the mattress while charging a phone is the worst possible idea.

Why did the smartphone catch fire on its own? There could be many reasons

It is worth noting, however, that simply hiding the phone under the pillow did not have to be the only or even the main cause of the fire. Well-functioning smartphones and their batteries have a number of protections that prevent the battery from overcharging or overheating just in case we leave the phone in a situation where it is unable to cool down. When the device’s components or the cell itself heats up to too high a temperature, the system should automatically cut off charging, at least until the phone cools down. So something must have gone wrong.

The user who described the situation admitted in one of the comments that the battery in his phone was replaced “over a year ago”, but he does not know whether the new cell was original. In many similar cases reported in the media, phones catching fire had their batteries replaced, which may or may not have been the cause of the problem. It could have been similar in this case (especially since the ignition occurred around 5 a.m., so probably a few hours after connecting to the charger).

Of course, the cause of battery ignition in this case could also be mechanical damage (cable or plug), non-original cable or damaged charger, poor quality battery replacement, or incorrect battery replacement process. However, this does not change the fact that charging the phone under the pillow added fuel to the fire, as it probably led to the phone actually overheating.

Even if you have a new phone and the original charger with cable, it is worth refraining from charging it at night (especially under the pillow). Charging at night is no longer harmful to the battery due to a number of charging support systems (many smartphones are initially charged, e.g. to 80 percent, and then – several minutes before wake-up time – to 100 percent). But the very fact that a phone connected to the network is placed close to the head, completely unattended, should be disturbing.

What’s more, today’s smartphones (or at least most of them) can be charged almost completely, often 20-30 minutes before leaving the house. Therefore, you can postpone replenishing the phone’s energy and connect the device to the power supply during your morning shower or coffee.