Epic fail: Hobbyist discovers you shouldn’t hammer the Galaxy S5’s LiPo battery

For whatever reason, the trend on YouTube right now is to record oneself breaking things. It started with the “Will it blend” series . . . 

. . . and has escalated to the point that Arnold Schwarzenegger is now posting clips of him running things over with his tank as part of his “Will it crush” series. 

One of the more popular “tests” to do is to take a hammer to a popular electronic device. Part slapstick, part investigative, all in all, it’s a total waste of money — devices that have been lost to the steel headed smack down range from old pagers to brand new iPhones.

Recently, amateur hobbyist / YouTube’r TechRax posted a video of him destroying a new Samsung Galaxy S5. To put things into perspective, this phone has been priced as high as $750, so why TechRax wanted to do this, let alone where he got the money to destroy a high-end gadget like the Galaxy S5, is questionable.

For those that find videos like this to be utterly infuriating, this is perhaps the most enjoyable clip of its kind to ever be posted. You see, during the course of TechRax’s hammering, he hit the device’s lithium polymer battery and, in doing so, punctured it.

Now, for those familiar with this portable source of power, a situation like this will cause one to gasp followed by a regretful shaking of the head. For those unfamiliar, a punctured LiPo battery not only releases toxic fumes that could be severely harmful to anyone within breathing distance, it’s also a major fire risk, as lithium reacts violently with air.

In short, the battery has a TON of chemical energy stored in it, and the last thing that should be touching it is a hammer.

In the following clip, TechRax smacks the Galaxy S5 a bunch of times before flipping it over and hitting its backside. When the LiPo battery is punctured, it sprays a black mist out. TechRax steps back from the scene and requests that a nearby friend retrieve some Febreeze to clear the air of the awful stench.

Unfortunately, he’s going to need a little more than some scent enhancer to make that room safe again.

Worth noting is the caption TechRax posted with the video:

Please, never hammer the back of your Samsung Galaxy S5 device. I attempted to do my usual knife and hammer test but I ended up getting some unexpected results instead. Here is the raw footage.

Story via YouTube