An Apple iPhone spontaneously began smoking and emitting a red glow while aboard an airplane in Australia. Passengers aboard Regional Express flight ZL319 were welcomed to their destination in Sydney, Australia on Friday by a frightening ordeal. According to the airline, a passenger’s iPhone began “emitting a significant amount of dense smoke” shortly after the flight landed, and the smoke was accompanied by a red glow. A flight attendant extinguished the device and no passengers or airline...

A Foxconn factory in Shadong, China caught fire on Tuesday but the blaze was quickly extinguished, Reuters reported. Foxconn said there will not be an impact on production and there were no worker casualties. An explosion caused damage at a Foxconn factory in Chengdu, China in May, and resulted in three Foxconn worker deaths, 15 injuries and a slowdown in Apple iPad production. That tragedy also caused a 2.14% monthly revenue dip, or about US$6.95 billion in lost revenue. A Foxconn spokesperson told Reuters t...

Amazon will unveil its Android-powered “Kindle Fire” tablet on Wednesday during a press event in New York City. The Kindle Fire will begin to ship during the second week of November and, with a similar-sized 7-inch screen, the device looks very much like the BlackBerry PlayBook according to reports. GDGT explained that the device was built by Quanta, the same manufacturer that built the PlayBook, and the firm played a big role in designing each of the slates. While recent leaks have created a lot ...

“I want to make sure that the employees don’t believe that I’ve abandoned them. I would never abandon them.” Those are the words of former Yahoo chief executive officer Carol Bartz who was fired from the firm over the phone last week but who said she would remain on the company’s board. Bartz no longer has a position on the board as of Monday, however, and it is possible that is a result of a recent interview with Fortune during which Bartz said Yahoo “f***ed me over”...

Research In Motion will lay off 2,000 of its employees, or about 10% of its total workforce, as part of a cost optimization program. “The workforce reduction is believed to be a prudent and necessary step for the long term success of the company and it follows an extended period of rapid growth within the company whereby the workforce had nearly quadrupled in the last five years alone,” the company said in a statement. The BlackBerry maker is also reorganizing several of its top management positio...

Cisco announced on Tuesday that it will layoff 9% of its workforce, or 6,500 jobs, in an effort to boost profits. That figure is lower than original speculation that the company would cut 10,000 employees. Cisco made the move as part of an effort to cut $1 billion in annual costs while spurring profit growth, Bloomberg reported. 2,100 of the 6,500 employees have agreed to an early-retirement program. Additionally, Cisco plans to sell a Juarez, Mexico-based manufacturing facility to Foxconn. The move will tran...

Skype has started to fire several of its executives in an effort to reduce payouts from its Microsoft purchase, Bloomberg reported on Monday. Among the execs being let go are vice presidents Christopher Dean, David Gurle, don Albert, and Russ Shaw, as well as chief marketing officer Doug Bewsher, and the head of human resources, Anne Gillespi. Two other execs from Skype’s Qik acquisition earlier this year — Ramu Sunkara and Allyson Campa — were also fired according to the report. This could possibly...

A sad Samsung Focus owner recently took to AT&T’s online forum with a tale of woe that could spell trouble for AT&T and Samsung. With pictures as evidence, the man alleges that his Samsung smartphone overheated while charging and burned both the charger port and the cable connector. He claims that his handset began repeatedly sounding a charging chime, even when it was not plugged into the charger. The man plugged his phone in to see if it might stop the chimes and within 30 seconds he says he s...

Competing smartphone platforms might be catching up to iOS when it comes to apps and UI styling — but can your Google phone do this? An iPhone 4 belonging to Omar Huartas allegedly blew up while his wife was holding it. According to Huertas’ video recount of the incident, the Apple smartphone became extremely hot while his wife held the device. The battery apparently swelled, dislodging the rear battery cover and catching fire. Huertas’ wife dropped the device on a table where it left visible b...

One of our very close AT&T sources just sent us in these images. Yes, it’s a fried iPhone 4. Apparently a customer brought the phone into the store to try and get help with it, although it’s pretty evident that the phone is unrepairable. It’s the first time our guy has seen this happen (us too), but the brand new iPhone 4 caught on fire while being hooked up to a computer using the Apple USB cable that accompanied the device. The customer wanted to exchange the iPhone — obviously &...

Sony has just announced its latest line of laptop batteries, engineered exclusively for masochists. Wait, no, don’t get excited. It looks like it was just an accident that Sony’s notebook batteries have been melting on people’s laps. Back to the shadows of society you go, you crazy deviants. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission has decided to recall approximately 35,000 laptop batteries after reports from 19 people that their lappys got a bit too hot to handle. 17 of the 19 reported tha...

Literally, on fire. Sony, along with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, has issued a recall on its TZ-Series laptop. The TZ100 series, Z200 series, TZ300 and TZ2000 series bought from July 2007- August 2008, to be exact. No overheating batteries this time, folks, the culprit instead is a poorly placed wire and/or dislodged screw in the hinge that could cause a short circuit. Short circuit = Overheating + Potential Fire. 15 cases have been reported so this is not a recall based on one man’s lon...