Sophos Cloud Optix
Back in 2012, one YouTube user demonstrated in a video that charging an iPhone 5 in a microwave oven had the tendency to set the crackling phone on fire after 40 seconds, after which it burst into a ball of flames.
Three minutes of microwaving didn’t help the battery level much – particularly considering that by then, the fried phone would be dead, flame-broiled, and removable only by spatula after hosing it down.
Charging-via-microwave was looking like it had evolved considerably in a non-lethal direction for Apple’s new iOS 8, with Apple’s new wireless “Wave” technology promising to interface with a device’s radio-baseband, thus allowing it to sync with microwave frequencies to charge its battery.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be, given that the preceding paragraph is full of dribble that comes from hoax marketing materials released over the weekend.
Wave is our latest and greatest addition to iOS8. Wave allows your device to be charged wirelessly through microwave frequencies. Wave can be used to quickly charge your device’s battery using any standard household microwave.
The pretty convincing marketing graphic which promotes Apple’s latest “Apple Wave” technology, is, in fact, brought to us courtesy of the rollicking tricksters over at 4chan.
Heating a phone in a microwave will not charge a device running iOS 8.
Not only will microwaving an iPhone – or any phone – or any chunk of metal – not work, it will also destroy the iPhone.
Nor will your microwave enjoy the experience, as is evidenced by the sad, blackened box that immolated the iPhone 5 in the video above.
Of course, none of that has stopped 4chan users from tweeting out the fake flyer under the hashtag #AppleWave.
A number of iPhone users have supposedly fallen for the trick, though I’m very suspicious of whether the photos going ’round the Twittersphere as purported evidence of the con’s effectiveness aren’t in fact borrowed from the video Mr. Toasty iPhone 5 posted two years ago.
Like this one:
Ralph @ralph23jays
Who else need a new iphone and microwave?
Remember, don’t believe the hype. The iPhone 6 is just a phone and iOS 8 just an operating system.
Its new features don’t include the ability to break the laws of physics.
It’s just one more lesson that we can’t believe everything we read on the intertubes, even if it uses the same Myriad humanist sans-serif typeface with distinctive “y” descender and slanting “e” cut, just like a true Apple marketing blitz.
And while we’re at it, would somebody please tell these poor frogs that the worms on that iPhone display aren’t real?
It’s probably just 4chan messing around with defenseless amphibians’ brains.
Composite image of iPhone 6, flames and microwave, courtesy of Shutterstock/SGM.
Thank goodness videos don’t smell…
That is coming in IOS 9.
“Heating a microphone in a microwave will not charge a device running iOS 8.” A microphone? I’m guessing that’s a typo?
Correct! Oops. Thanks for flagging it.
Yes, thank you for catching that! Microwaves must have vibrated my brain’s vocabulary center. 🙂
I read it on the Internet, it must be true!
This is too funny!! I can’t believe people would actually think that microwaving their iphone would do anything! What’s next? I don’t even want to know…
I’ll be sure to share this with our student body and faculty for a good laugh!
ugh: getting feedback that people really did fall for this. Poor iPhones. Poor microwaves. Poor new-phone buyers!
Perhaps the feedback is as bogus as the original story? You don’t hear of people microwaving their pets (well, except in bogus stories) to dry them off…surely, in 2014, phones fall into a similar “everyone knows you mustn’t do that” category?
If you deal with enough “normal people,” you realize that some have no idea how anything dealing with electricity, radio (micro or otherwise), mechanics or computing works. I have heard people convinced that after a microwave turns off, you should wait at least 5 seconds for the microwaves to disperse.
I have heard people say that all radiation causes cancer, not realizing that light is radiation. I hear people that think microwaves in microwave ovens are the same microwave radio relays—thinking that is a bird gets hit by one, it will explode.
Even more do not know what the difference between voltage and amperage is, and are convinced 2A USB chargers will destroy their phones, not charge them faster… I have seen questions asking if the voltage out of USB charger was compatible with their phone. These are the same people that know how to search, yet are too stupid to look up USB specs on Wikipedia…
So, when I hear some people are so naïve that they will fall for this, it is no surprise. Remember: 100 IQ is the Average, meaning statistically, close half the people out there are fairly ignorant and/or stupid and some are so dim that they will fall for almost any prank.
Though, to be fair, all of the examples you cite are of the “fail safe” sort as far as microwaving your phone goes. If people were generally prepared to assume that ionising radiation posed no hazard at all, then I’d agree that microwaved phones (and cats, and so on) would be an expected risk. But the concerns you mention seem to lean more towards overcaution in respect of microwave radiation.
(As for dumping too much energy into Lithium batteries…that really *is* a risk, isn’t it?)
I mentioned those as examples of things that were blatantly wrong, without regard to which side of error they were on. The point is that basic science education and research skills in most people is sorely lacking. Simply looking things up in reputable sources would prevent errors on either side assuming a person was of close to average intelligence. Wrong is still wrong, and when it is easily preventable, it is even more pathetic. Virtually no one does their own research or looks things up once told them. Instead most people will believe whatever they are told without questioning a person’s credentials or motives.
If people were better educated, we’d have less victims—whether that victim is one of social engineering to steal their ID, or a victim of a salesperson that sold them an overpriced “fast-charger” or gold-plated cable for a better connection at twice the actual street value.
By virtue of being here, and reading this, people here at least do bother to look things up, and hopefully send links to their more gullible friends. Thanks for blogging about this, BTW. While absurd, Microwave oven charging is sadly a symptom of a bigger problem.
The word you are searching for is drivel, not dribble.
driv·el
ˈdrivəl/Submit
noun
1.
silly nonsense.
“don’t talk such drivel!”
synonyms: nonsense, twaddle, claptrap, balderdash, gibberish, rubbish, mumbo jumbo, garbage; More
That was actually a deliberate spoonerism, playing with “drivel” and the image of slobber, which actually make a nice pairing, to my mind, particularly when talking about 4chan-generated material. 🙂
I know that one, at least, is non-bogus. Let’s hope/assume it’s an extremely isolated case.