Plenty of things can go wrong for the owner of a hot new phone like Apple’s latest flagships, from simply changing your mind and seeking to return the pricey device to the occasional minor malfunction, various types of software issues, or accidental damage causing the world to come crashing down on you.

But it’s certainly unusual, not to mention incredibly scary, for a three-week-old handset to spontaneously combust, inflicting bodily harm on an unsuspecting user. Fortunately, an Ohio man that purportedly went through the nightmare scenario recently escaped the incident (largely) safe and ...