Although is a little bit rare for an iPhone battery to explode because it is so small, a discoloration has occur on some white iPhone 3GS, mostly revealing the battery outline. Over the past weeks a small number of iPhone owners reported their handsets reached high temperatures.

Quote from "gizmodo.com"

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The black art of battery life testing takes time—that's why every launch day review had some version of "we'll get back to you"—as well they should. Now, after a weekend of testing, some hard data on battery numbers are starting to trickle in. But the iPhone is such a complex device that your results will likely vary from the numbers above.

There are some hedges that need to be made here that almost no one is making. Because of 3G, you'll kill batteries faster, but you're also downloading much faster, so can get more browsing done in a set amount of time. What's the math on the total number of web page refreshes vs. the old one? Secondly, no one yet is checking on the battery life while playing a high-end 3D-game like Monkey Ball or Motionx-poker; these games are not only running the GPU and CPU full bore, but the screen too. Gaming is probably the most intense activity you can do. Just wait for the multiplayer gaming to start and see what happens. Thirdly, because the apps give new functionality to the iPhone, you're going to be using it a lot more often than before. Especially in the first few days.

But back to the scores. As you can see, they're kind of all over the place.

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/4/2008/07/804x_804x_iphone_batterygraph_short.png

One takeaway seems to be that as far as straight-up 3G talk time goes, the iPhone 3G is near the top of the range—Wirelessinfo and PC World both found it to be among the best 3G handsets they've tested for voice talk time. For mixed use and browsing numbers, the range is pretty wide, since the variables at play are nearly infinite.
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Aaron Vronko of Rapid Repair said “My guess is there’s going to be a whole lot of batteries affected because these iPhones are from very large production runs,” “If you have a problem in the design of a series of batteries, it’s probably going to be spread to tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, and maybe more.”

Of all hardware-related failures, overheating batteries have historically posed the greatest safety risks - in extreme cases causing fires, exploding and even killing consumers. The issues of overheating batteries are typically traced to faulty battery cells provided by a component supplier.

Apple in August 2008 issued a recall for defective iPod Nanos, which caused three fires in Japan. In that incident, Apple said only 0.001 percent of iPod Nanos were affected. Even so, that’s still a large number of consumers, considering the millions of iPods sold.

Over the past weekend, a small number of iPhone 3GS owners reported in forums and on blogs that their handsets were reaching oddly high temperatures. The issue was most visible in white iPhones, which were turning brown as a result of the high heat (right).

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/2009/06/260620091381.jpg

“At some point, I became aware the handset had become very hot,” wrote Melissa Perinson, senior editor of PC World, who felt high temperatures while gaming and browsing the web on her iPhone 3GS. “Very, very hot - not just on the back, but the entire length of the front face, too…. Toasty doesn’t even describe how surprisingly hot it got. It was too hot to even put the phone against my face.”

Vronko said the iPhone 3GS’s heat problem is evidently tied to the battery, because the pictures of discolored white iPhones reveal the outline of the battery. He noted that although thousands of iPhone 3GS users probably own defective handsets, the risk of causing fire or explosion is low because the iPhone’s battery cell is extremely small.

“An overheating iPhone is much less dangerous than a laptop,” Vronko said. “It’s extremely rare for a cellphone battery to explode. A little bit of smoke eventually is probably the best bet.”

He stressed, however, that overheating will more likely cause complete failure of the iPhone 3GS over time. When a battery overheats, it’s getting a runaway reaction that produces gas, causing expansion to occur inside the sealed battery. This expansion puts pressure on components, damaging them and eventually killing the iPhone.

Wired.com polled iPhone 3GS owners via Twitter asking if they were experiencing any problems with their new handsets. Only one out of 21 respondents said his iPhone 3GS felt like it was overheating.
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Source(s):
http://gizmodo.com/5025309/round-up-nine-iphone-3g-battery-life-test-result...

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/06/overheating-iphones/


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