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Claim from Facebook:

enter image description here

Did you know?

A smartphone microwaves for just one minute will fully charge the battery.

Lifehacker insists it's fake, and I know it is, but I figured it'd be a useful one to have someone explain the scientific basis or describe what will actually happen, and why.

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2 Answers 2

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There is plenty of people trying ad hoc experiments about what happens to phones put in a microwave:

Without peer-review and a proper literature search, there is a limit to how much we can trust these anecdotes. Further, these phones are old - not modern cell-phones.

However, in each video, the phone is completely destroyed - the the microwave is sometimes damaged. It should be sufficient evidence to convince people that this claim is a hoax.

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    unacceptable answer, without peer reviewed scientific study it's just anecdotal...
    – jwenting
    Jun 12, 2013 at 5:41
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    I certainly agree it isn't a peer-reviewed scientific study, and explicitly warn about that and limited its reliability. If you have a peer-reviewed scientific study, it should be voted up over this. However, I do not believe a peer-reviewed scientific study is likely to exist on this matter. They are not anecdotes is the sense that 'they (allegedly) happened to me, and I offer no evidence that they actually happened'. They are anecdotes in the sense they are the results of ad hoc experiments, not a scientific analysis. I explicitly admit that too.
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Jun 12, 2013 at 8:14
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    We could suggest the gullible all try this and video the result. That should give us some thousands of data points :-)
    – Rory Alsop
    Jun 12, 2013 at 11:46
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    To be fair, the claim is only about microwaving batteries, not the entire phone. Although the graphic seems to be borrowed from an iPhone/iPod, and the claim specifically mentions Apple devices, which typically have non-removable batteries. At minimum, it's a confused claim.
    – Flimzy
    Jun 12, 2013 at 14:28
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    @Flimzy: I considered that and concluded "A smart phone microwaved for just one minute" referred to the whole unit, not merely the battery.
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Jun 12, 2013 at 15:01
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Snopes.com debunks this claim; the analysis even includes the graphic in the question above.

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  • Answers on this site should show a little bit of effort. Please try to give a full answer. Snopes talks about it, and? Do they provide references? Did you check them?
    – Sklivvz
    Jun 25, 2013 at 8:52

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