"
she panicked and tried to remove the battery by prying open the back of the iPhone. As she did so, the battery, she says, was “in the process of melting and oozing liquid (acid).
”
You can't "pry out" the back cover on the iPhone 4S. It requires a specific pentalobe screwdriver which is not your garden variety Philips or torx one. It's very easily doable wih the right tool but I doubt she had it with her while her phone was "burning" lying around on her table.
She probably did something to cause it to burn up and is probably looking to get a free replacement by claiming "spontaneous combustion". There's an army of bloggers to assist with these endeavours.
There's a reason why Kara Swisher of AllThingsD is so critical about the tech blog reporting scene's way of "breaking" stories at all costs - even if they're factually untrue.
A guy in the comments suggests that this was caused by spilled coffee. He could be wrong, but I just don't see why Apple should be the bad guy of a story by default, when the writers haven't bothered to investigate the matter.
As someone that has built many Li-ion batteries, there isn't any acid. The only liquid that could have possibly oozed out is the electrolyte, which is an organic solvent with lithium salts in it (which is somewhat hazardous).
You can't "pry out" the back cover on the iPhone 4S. It requires a specific pentalobe screwdriver which is not your garden variety Philips or torx one. It's very easily doable wih the right tool but I doubt she had it with her while her phone was "burning" lying around on her table.
She probably did something to cause it to burn up and is probably looking to get a free replacement by claiming "spontaneous combustion". There's an army of bloggers to assist with these endeavours.