Nokia Investigating Reported Cell Phone Explosions

Iphtashu Fitz writes "C|Net's news.com is reporting that a man in the Netherlands suffered burns to his leg when the Nokia phone in his pants pocket exploded. This is the second reported incident of Nokia phones exploding, the first one being back in August when a Dutch woman's phone exploded in her hand. Nokia blamed the first incident on a third party battery that the woman was using and warned customers to only use Nokia parts and accessories with their phones. However this most recent explosion involved a new Nokia phone with a Nokia battery installed."

This is scary

[l810c]

I've had my most recent Nokia for 2 years. It can get Really Hot when I talk for a long time(>20 minutes). It actually gets uncomfortable to hold to my ear.

Is it about to explode? Any links on what signs to look for before your cell phone battery explodes? A search for 'exploding battery' on Nokia.com didn't return any results. Seems like they should take a more proactive approach and at least issue a warning. I couldn't find any.

Exactly what is exploding?

[MavEtJu]

Does anybody know what is actually exploding? Is it the battery? Is it the CPU? Is it one of the memory chips? "The telephone is exploding" is almost as vague "his house blew up".

On Purpose?

[interiot]

Jason Kottke links to suggestions [kottke.org] that the Nokia phones detect batteries which aren't made by Nokia, and when it detects on, it puts the phone in maximum-current-draw mode to try to encourage the user to buy a Nokia battery, and this could be causing the exploding batteries.

Of course, this is an allegation that'd be hard to prove without insider verification. Or possibly, with some astute multimeter readings.

Sounds like urban legend.

[Anonymous Coward]

The bad capacitors on motherboards just leaked. It's rare to get one exploding, in fact you only would in a PSU, where there's substantially more current than in a cell phone.

Batteries don't explode in a cell phone situation. It's physically just not possible. Perhaps if they were charging and provided with an external power source that's greater than they can handle. They can certainly leak, they can get warm, but there's no way a battery in use in a device without external power can just "explode"

Re:This is scary

[dougmc]

Its been said that lithium batteries can store close to the energy density of gasoline.

Not quite. But it's getting up there ...

NiMH batteries appear to have a different failure mode than lithium from overcharging. They just seem to degrade in performance.

Actually, a NiMH or NiCd cell can also short itself out, especially if damaged in some way (like dropped.) This creates a `hot smoker' where the battery will get *very* hot (NiCds have lower internal resistances than NiMHs, so they get even hotter) and can even cause fires. But they don't usually explode ...