Flaming Cellphones 288
phorm writes "Many of us have heard the urban legend of cellphones causing fires at the gas pump, but how about the hazards of replacement batteries? Reuters is carrying a story about a woman whose cellphone burst into flame, causing her superficial burn injuries. According to Nokia, the problem has occured before, and is related to non-brand replacement batteries. For various reasons, these batteries may overheat and catch fire, or even explode! So far I haven't found much info on whether this has happened with other brands of phone, though I do know that my little flip-phone gets very hot when running in analog mode. Perhaps some slashdot readers have had a similar experience?"
Quick! (Score:4, Funny)
Quick!-Gas tank. (Score:3, Funny)
Hell, I'm on the fire brigade -- (volunteer)..... (Score:2, Funny)
* Although I did once load a woman with a broken jaw into an ambulance after she wrecked a brand new truck while talking on the phone. Guess what, when we got there, she was STILL TALKING. You must have something important to say to talk on a cell in a busted truck with a busted jaw.
Re:Hell, I'm on the fire brigade -- (volunteer)... (Score:5, Funny)
So the doc asks what happened to the other side of his face.
"I had to call an ambulance."
Re:Hell, I'm on the fire brigade -- (volunteer)... (Score:3, Funny)
Doc: So, why is the first side burned twice as badly as the second side?
BBQ guy: Right after I hung up from talking to 911, the first caller called back.
[ba-da-BOOM!] Thank you very much...I'm here 'till Sunday.
Physics of Shorted Batteries. (Score:4, Informative)
The mechanism for the exploding cell-phone batteries is most likely the same mechanism for exploding car batteries. Namely, electricity can cause the oxygen and hydrogen in water to dissociate. When this happens, if they hydrogen and oxygen mixture cannot escape, the pressure and the stored energy in the gases builds up. Eventually, there is a spark, or a pop (and then maybe a spark) which causes the battery to explode and then the hydrogen/oxygen mixture burns.
I think you're overcomplicating things.
Take a piece of wire. Wrap it in plastic. Use it to short out a freshly-charged Ni-Cd, NiMH, lead-acid or Li-ion battery. Flames.
Any power source - battery, power supply, whatever - capable of good current can heat a piece of wire enough to cause ignition. Think of the wires in your toaster.
This is not like the old carbon-zinc Eveready "cat of 9 lives" batteries you'd short out when you were a kid. These actually have lots of stored energy and very little internal resistance to limit the short circuit current.
The problem now is that modern battery technology which gives us long cellphone and PDA charge times also means that we're carrying around a lot of chemical energy in our pockets, and any failure which results in a short circuit across the batteries will generate a lot of heat and potentially ignite plastic housings.
Never mind that as you increase the energy density of a battery, you must - by the very nature of electrochemical cells - be increasing the reactiveness (ie. toxicity and danger) of the chemicals used to make the battery.
If you think this is fun, just wait until we have electric cars! Think gasoline is nasty stuff? (I can't wait to say, "I told you so!".)
Adobe cars with Fuel Cells (Score:5, Interesting)
Any practical electric car will use fuel cells anyway, so told who so?
And the fuel cells do what with fuel? Provide a large power supply with little internal resistance, as is required to run the large loads of electric motors to drive the wheels. What do *you* think will happen when the wires or bus bars between the fuel cells and anything else get crimped during a car accident?
Never mind that fuel cells run on combustible fuel which must be brought into close proximity to the soon-to-be-glowing-red-hot output terminals of the car accident fuel cell. At least in conventional cars, the only statistically significant source of fuel ignition is sparking from randomly bent metal scraping on asphalt. Of course, you'll still have that, too - unless your fuel cell car is an Adobe. (Old SNL reference, all you Gen-Y types won't get it.)
Of course, this means that fuel cells will actually be practical. Given the notorious sensitivity of their osmotic membranes the sort of fuel contamination which passes right through most filtration devices, I can't imagine that you'll be filling your car up off too many gas station tanks.
Ask Slashdot: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ask Slashdot: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ask Slashdot: (Score:2, Funny)
Flaming cellphones? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Flaming cellphones? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Flaming cellphones? (Score:3)
Re:Flaming cellphones? (Score:2)
Huzzah! (Score:4, Funny)
So... (Score:3, Funny)
Are we supposed to welcome the cell phones as our new overlords, or the off-brand batteries?
Judging from... (Score:2)
retribution! (Score:3, Funny)
if so all I can say is:
"hah hah"
Coverup! (Score:4, Funny)
If you work for the CIA, do not take company messages while drinking coffee and browsing CDs at the record store.
Other brands of phone - Siemens (Score:5, Informative)
A spokeswoman for Siemens said a GSM (cellphone) of the Siemens brand exploded last year in Germany. It concerned a phone that was placed in a carkit. During recharging, the phone had overheated and exploded. Nobody was injured in that incident. The user of the phone had bought the battery at a fleamarket.
* http://nu.nl/news.jsp?n=193292&c=51 [nu.nl]
Re:Other brands of phone - Siemens (Score:5, Informative)
Heise has had an article [heise.de] on this as well. Translation follows.
Normally, one would only see this kind of stuff happening in rather bad secret agent movies, but now it happened to a woman in Amsterdam: Her cell phone exploded. These news about the exploded mobile phone are likely to disturb many cell phone owners: "Could this happen with my phone too?" In the Netherlands city, the woman's phone had first fallen to the ground. When she turned it on again and held it to her ear, the device exploded and caught fire. The woman suffered minor injuries. Experts, however, see no reason to be concerned: Cell phones explode extremely rarely, according to Bernd Schwencke, head of the cellular phone testing department of the German Quality Testing agency, Stiftung Warentest, in Berlin.
"Up to now, no such case was known to me," Schwencke notes. According to him, what's unusual about this event in the Netherlands is that the phone did not catch fire during recharging as in previously known cases, but while using the phone. In previous cases where the rare case of a mobile phone catching fire occured, forged batteries were spotted as the cause. This was also the cause when a Siemens phone caught fire during recharging in a car kit. The phone manufacturer was not responsible -- the device was equipped with a bogus battery that was not properly working. "The accumulator had no overcharging protection and simply burst like a balloon filled with too much air," says Stefan Muller, spokesperson for the Siemens mobile phone division in Munich. Unfortunately, the plagiarized products mostly originating from Asia are still a problem, according to Muller. To prevent the use of such "time bombs" in cell phones, the experts advise to only buy batteries in specialized stores instead of flea markets -- even if a manufacturer's logo is on the battery.
Re:Other brands of phone - Siemens (Score:5, Funny)
Exploding Siemens?
Sometimes they make it all too easy...
Liability. (Score:5, Insightful)
Still, if this is happening there's obviously some hazardous defects with the batteries, and any responsible battery manufacturer would issue a recall. I remember that Apple had similar problems with some of the old Powerbook models, and they recalled the defective batteries/computers right away.
Re:Liability. (Score:2)
Re:Liability. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd say that a cellphone bursting into flames is *slightly* more dangerous than a printer cartridge "damaging" a printer, although YMMV.
Re:Liability. (Score:2)
Right, which is why the refilled ink cartriges I used a while ago were as good of quality to the HP ones. The refilled ones didn't have a habit of smearing as they came out, nor did they give a lighter print, nor did the ink in them dry out in the print heads preventing the rest of the ink from being used.
Or why I've heard of replacement batteries causing cell phones to burn up on
Re:Liability. (Score:2)
Serves them right... (Score:3, Funny)
Grr (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Grr (Score:2)
Re:Grr (Score:2)
Last time anybody called me a fag was when I was perched above the flag with a railgun.
Stupid IP... (Score:5, Funny)
Full power! (Score:5, Informative)
So hang up when your phone is a hot potatoe! (Score:3, Funny)
"Sorry, honey, I gotta go. My phone is about to spontaneously combust."
Re:Full power! (Score:5, Informative)
Handheld cell phones are limited to somewhere around 0.6 watts. Typically, the newer digital phones (at least from about 3 years ago) would typically have max analog power near 0.5 watts. In digital mode they often can go lower, with CDMA phones transmitting lower still (in theory).
In this case it would appear the phone was dropped. When the phone was turned back on it suddenly ignited. This would seem to indicate a severe short somewhere, and no safety circuit to cut power in case of short, if any such circuits exist on any batteries to begin with.
Typically you hear about two kinds of damage to cell phones. The most common I've heard of is batteries catching fire or exploding during the recharge process. And this is perfectly understandable -- feel a battery while it is getting recharged, they can get pretty warm. Some phone batteries would get so warm while inside the phone on the recharger or plugged into a cig. adapter that they would melt the plastic case of phone itself. I know some "rapid" car cig. adapter chargers from phone vendors have special circuits to control the charging, and the generic cheap adapters don't have the same circuit (if at all).
The other heat related problems I've heard of with cell phones is from extremely long transmissions. Say a handheld phone plugged into a cig adapter and used for 200+ minutes. The transmitter can get pretty warm, and I've heard of some of the smaller/thinner plastic phones (early MicroTAC? don't remember for sure) had plastic melt.
I've never heard of a phone bursting into flames, melting the case, or otherwise get hot when it was not directly related to recharging or extended use. At least not until now.
Something had to be pretty severely damaged or there was no safety cut off circuit somewhere to allow a cold phone to burst into flames like that. Sometimes those bargain batteries and accessories aren't such a bargain after all.
Here's my question. Did she get the battery used in this phone from the same store she got her phone from? I've bought several phones over the years, and the last few years you just about could not find OEM parts, the carrier stores had the cheap stuff there in packaging with their carrier names on it. So, if she bought her phone from a carrier store, and they gave her the battery, then would that carrier assume the liability for this happening, since it was not a Nokia battery involved?
Re:Full power! (Score:2, Interesting)
hmm...I don't know about that but I'm a bit rusty on my AMPS spec so I'll take your word.
Precisely! CDMA in particular is capable of so low a transmission power that it can be
typical question for an american! (Score:3, Interesting)
First thing that enters people's minds out there... Liability! As they say, America is a nation of lawyers and order. Fortunately, the woman's Dutch, and the fact that the burns were superficial should ensure that nothing of that sort is going to happen. She'll probably just buy a new phone and get on with her life
It's not a bug, it's a feature (Score:5, Funny)
They aren't kidding.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The battery controller is in the phone, not the battery, so if it doesn't get the battery it expects to get, there's no limit to the pyromaniac fun that can be had.
Re:They aren't kidding.... (Score:2)
Since the phone is designed this way, the burn victim should be able to recover damages from a manufacturer that designed a phone to explode when the phone does not approve of the battery.
Aug 22 23:04:35 nokia kernel: cell0 on fire (Score:2)
Here [google.com] is an explanation of the original lp0 on fire message.
Re:They aren't kidding.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Inspired by the Simpson's (Score:5, Funny)
False alarm! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:False alarm! (Score:2)
Oh man, I can't believe I get that. Not very often you see Inspector Gadget references here!
This brings a whole new meaning (Score:5, Funny)
It also opens up the potential for cellphones to be sold as firestarters for campers outside of the transmission range, a wholly untapped market.
nokia falls for urban legends (Score:5, Interesting)
to quote from page 12...
Don't use the phone at a refueling point. Don't use near fuel or chemicals.
here's a pdf of the user guide:/ 3520.pdf [nokia.ca]
http://www.nokia.ca/english/products/user_manuals
Re:nokia falls for urban legends (Score:5, Funny)
Glock gun: Point away from face. (Aaahhh. So THAT'S what I've been doing wrong)
Re:nokia falls for urban legends (Score:2)
Lithium Ion batteries and overcurrent protection (Score:5, Informative)
The reason the overcurrent protection is built in is because Lithium Ion batteries will reach the flash temperature of plastic if current is drawn from them too fast.
So... don't rip the plastic off the pack and short them out except by remote control.
Thankyou.
My story with NiCads and NiMH on my cellphone (Score:5, Funny)
Count me in.
Back in the late Eighties, I bought one of those 'brick' phones. Of course, as was the style at the time they weren't called that, because they just happened to be that size, nothing special.
As was the style at the time, the phones used ridiculous NiCad batteries for portability -- when you were in the car, they ran off of a device hooked up to the car battery, so you didn't need to wear the batteries out. Unfortunately the NiCad batteries were crap. As you probably already know, NiCad batteries have this really horrible 'memory' effect where if you recharge the battery before it's completely empty, it thinks that where you've just started to recharge it from is the *real* empty.. and it's not.
I could also only get thirty minutes' talk time out of a full charge, although it'd stay on standby on one charge for about three hours. Considering it took 12 hours to charge the NiCad (overnight charger), this wasn't a great arrangement if you wanted to use the phone while out and about during the daytime.
At the time, NiMH's weren't available for cell phones, in fact hardly anyone used them at all for anything really. But they delivered better battery life (for the time), didn't have the horrible memory effect, and charged more quickly than the NiCads charged.
So what I did was buy a second battery from Motorola for the princely sum of $95 (!!! and this was in the Eighties!!), I gutted it, and replaced all of the NiCad cells (yes, those big batteries are just collections of batteries all hooked together - it's not just one giant pool of acid in there..) with approximately 25 regular AA sized NiMH batteries that I bought at some store in a town. And, yes, I made sure the voltages all added up and that the current supply somewhat matched up. So I threw the casing back on the battery, hooked it up, and the phone worked! Talk-time was up to about ninety minutes, standby time was up to SIX hours (!! - I know, this sounds pretty ridiculous by today's standards, but there you go). I was walking on air.
A week later, I was walking along, cellphone in its case (they were big, so you carried them in things kinda like camera cases - you know, those big Nikon camera bags, that you can get a few lenses in).. phone was on standby,and suddenly BANG, the side casing of the battery ploughed a hole through the bag and fell onto the floor and suddenly all this goop (the battery acid) was running out. I dropped it immediately and battery acid was pouring out everyplace.
That was some dangerous stuff.
Above post by Grandpa Simpson (Score:2, Funny)
Re:My story with NiCads and NiMH on my cellphone (Score:2, Insightful)
hmm....
Re:My story with NiCads and NiMH on my cellphone (Score:3, Funny)
Whoah... It thinks? This is a major developemnt - I must return to my battery lab!
Re:My story with NiCads and NiMH on my cellphone (Score:2)
I also remember I had a recent gmt motorola cell phone that did take standard rechargable AA batteries, or a slim NiCad pack.
I never had complex issues with the batteries exploding.
I suspect that your motorola brick phone solution, or was it bag phone, i'm not sure, but consi
Re:My story with NiCads and NiMH on my cellphone (Score:2)
http://members.fortunecity.com/fretman/rock/coa
--God I miss that old Looney Tunes LP.
Surprised? (Score:2)
I guess that when you buy cheap crap from the Ukraine you get burned, literally.
Flaming phones don't interest me (Score:3, Funny)
I like burning the phone bills.
I would pay to see that... (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds suspiciously like FUD to me . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
I could see this being true, but I could just as easily see it as a story planted by the phone manufacturer for one of two purposes:
LiIon can easily thermal-runaway (Score:5, Informative)
Lithium Ion batteries will do this very readily when drained or charged too fast...or if overheated past a certain point under what would otherwise be normal current draw...and it's one of the reasons, for example, Panasonic won't sell me the cells I need to fix my Powerbook G3 Lombard's battery(almost all laptop+camcorder batteries, save the newest, are simply AA-sized LiIon cells in various series+parallel configurations).
Panasonic won't sell to anyone except a 'certified systems designer' who has signed agreements saying they'll design proper charging and current/temperature limiting circuitry. God forbid you should simply want to fix a battery pack which is no longer made. I suspect they do it mostly to keep battery pack repair impossible and force everyone to simply run right out and drop $50(cell phones) to $300(some laptop batteries). Sound conspiracy-theory ripe? :-)
LiIon is actually a pretty crappy technology, at least as far as consumers are concerned. Nobody told consumers that for the extra talk minutes they got, their battery will be damn near worthless in a few months if they use their phone a lot...because LiIon looses a staggering amount of its capacity with every charge/discharge cycle- and the deeper the discharge, the more capacity is lost with each cycle. NiMH batteries don't have this problem. Funny thing, eh?
Even worse, the batteries never get recycled(you think the consumer drives to the town dump and puts the battery in the battery recyling box? Nooooooo), they simply get chucked. There are some really nasty chemicals in LiIon batteries(like just about any battery technology today.)
By the way, speaking of batteries and the environment, a lot of people have trouble with car batteries and simply buy new ones instead of taking care of their car battery better(granted, car batteries are usually recycled better, because it's easier, and there's a lot of material, but still...) This site covers just about anything you ever wanted to know about lead-acid batteries and how to properly care for them: http://uuhome.de/william.darden/
Re:LiIon can easily thermal-runaway (Score:2)
If that's the case, and Panasonic won't sell you batteries, buy someone else's battery pack, take it apart and resolder the cells into your Powerbook battery pack. Problem solved.
Re:LiIon can easily thermal-runaway (Score:3, Interesting)
It is a conspiracy, flat out. There's no need for
Um, no. (Score:3, Informative)
-Mark
Theaters? (Score:2)
Really??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Nice. Just goes to show you that price doesn't always mean you should buy it...
I can see it now...
Woman sues battery maker for causing personal injury due to defective device. Company not able to pay the settlement, and so gives user a free lifetime supply of (fixed) product...
Such a dilemma... To use it or not to use it...
and in related news ... (Score:5, Funny)
"John Smith, 45, received minor burns to his hands Thursday evening when his computer suddenly burst into flames. Operating system vendor Microsoft provided a statement, indicating that the cause of the small fire was due to the use of Star Office, a 'non-microsoft brand' product."
why doesnt this happen... (Score:5, Funny)
Well (Score:2, Funny)
Ok, here is my rig (Phone):
I got a small vantec Geforce2 chip fan, and drilled (dremel) a hole on the back of my phone (Sanyo 4900) behind the PCB. The fan was at first glued by superglue, but since this didn't work when temperate went high, I then used a length of duck tape to permantaly bind the fan to the phone.
But this caused some problems, namly they tape went around the phone, thus the keys were all stuck behind the phone. Thus, I spent an afternoon u
Gas stations and lithium ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Gasoline ends in "ne" and have that "eeen" pronunciation to them. Xylene. Benzene. Toluene. All come from crude oil and all have a bloody low flash point.
Second, lithium batteries have the highest energy to weight ratio, and yes, folks are still careless with them. Most batteries I believe even have a little resistor in them to moderate the output. Lithium is nasty nasty stuff. I don't suppose anyone here remembers when Kodak started pumping out some of the first lithium cells? Guess how they stored them in the warehouse? On METAL shelves! The battery contacts shorted against the metal shelves and you can guess what happened.
Nasty thing about lithium batts is when they do burn. You essentially need Lithex to put the fire out. Granted you get a warning when something's up. There are sulfur in the batteries as well (a few other things, the mixture is part organic), so you can smell the typical rotten egg smell when the batteries are outgassing. When you smell that -- toss them and RUN. Defense contractors and places working with these things often have bomb blankets and ammo cases around for these suckers for a reason.
Point? Both of these are dangerous substances, and I wouldn't want to be near them when they start burning together!
-----
Re:Gas stations and lithium ... (Score:2)
The military used them for about 15 years before they were introduced into civilian use. The delay was not due to classification, but because they were simply too dangerous and unstable.
After some years, the designers were able to dilute the strength (and volatility) of the cells by a factor of about 1
Answer to your question (Score:3, Funny)
Please refer this kind of questions to Darwin Awards [darwinawards.com]
Verizon?? (Score:2)
Good!
heh (Score:4, Funny)
Cell Phones, a new weapon of terror (Score:2, Insightful)
Does this mean that any lithium ion devices (such as the Tungsten W I just bought) should be banned from airplanes?
And does the fact that I'm arab, and in fact palestinian, and in possession of a Tungsten W, immediatly make me a threat to national security?
Interesting... I think I'll go back to paper cups and string :)
Yes it's only an uban legend... (Score:2)
Just like filling up gas containers on the plastic liners of a pickup truck right? *cough* static*cough*
I've never seen an explosion caused by a cellphone but I've seen vapor ignition caused by a cellphone. Ofcourse in favor of people and their cell phones, it did have a small electrical short in the phone.
And for those craving more information it wasn't at a gas station, but at a factory plant where everyone carries one of the phone type jobs, some yahoo was filling a mac
Thanks a lot! (Score:3, Funny)
"Stop that man!!! He's got a CELL PHONE hidden in his shoe!!!"
Re:Thanks a lot! (Score:3)
You get what you pay for. (Score:2)
That's ridiculous... (Score:5, Funny)
It's not just the batteries (Score:4, Funny)
I never did learn why the order came through, and I spent the next two weeks in sick bay, listening to the doctor tell me how he's "not this" and "not that." At least I got a raise in rank, and a nice blue uniform to replace the scorched red one.
I can see it now... (Score:2, Funny)
Is There Any Way... (Score:4, Informative)
I do commercial radio repairs for a living so I may have a little insight here.
First, let me say that the heat generated by the phones while transmitting in analog mode is due to heat generated by the RF power amplifier IC Module in the phone. It is the most power-consuming part of the phone, followed by battery recharging and backlight hi-voltage power supplies. Hand held cell handsets are usually power limited to 300 mW max. The old Motorola Shoe Phones used to put out 3W of power max. (!) before the cell tower infrastructure was sufficiently built up to not need those levels of power.
But anyway, the battery only gets hot while charging. If it gets hot during discharge, it's under a serious over-current situation that is a "Bad Thing" and would never be designed as such. The only situation like that I've ever heard of is with some R/C racing cars that have special hi-temperature battery packs that are specifically designed to deliver high current into a near-short circuit condition. And they don't last very long in that sort of service!
Finally, about the urban legend - there actually may be something to it. I know that Motorola Handie-Talkies are sold in what the call "Intrinsically Safe" versions, that are for use in mines, and explosive atmospheres (chemical spills, fires, etc.)
All of the contacts and switches inside the radio are not hermetically sealed, and even the tiny arcs they make at 5-7 volts are enough to detonate an explosive atmosphere. So they make the radios with something like a tire valve at the bottom, and positively pressurize the radio to +1 atmosphere with nitrogen. These radios and their batteries are marked with green dots, and have an MSA (Mine Safety Associates) approval sticker on them.
To the extent that gas fumes are explosive in the air while refueling a vehicle, if the radio isn't an intrinsically safe one, the possibilty of detonation exists. Probably it would only happen from switch contact closure, if you were talking and not dialing or opening/closing the phone by the pump, then nothing would be likely to happen.
Bang?! Not good.... Not unexpected but not good... (Score:2)
With all the pressure to make things better and faster by exploiting cheaper labor and vast international differentials in labor and environmental laws, capitalism has created a situation that makes the event described seem a lot less like news.
With Globalization in place, Asian companies are getting a lot of exposure to cutting-edge technology in an industrial wild-west setting in which you find companies manufacturing items i
Audiovox CDM8200 overheat (Score:2)
I've noticed that every once in a while, my phone will heat up to uncomfortable temps while talking. The heat seems to come from the phone itself, not the battery - from the front side of the phone, near the lcd. The phone is in digital mode when it happens.
Now I know y'all like speculating, so - what would cause this? Has anyone else had similar experience with factory-original phones?
dell laptop batteries have done the same thing (Score:2, Informative)
a little hot? try exploding! (Score:4, Interesting)
Those of us salivating all over the Samsung SPH-i500 PalmPDA/phone [testflysamsung.com] (units of which finally started trickling to market 3 weeks ago) have been hearing for weeks of the travails of this guy who's modded his to add Bluetooth and maybe more.
"I decided to build the sled out of the extended battery. Initially, I was planning on making the standard battery fit inside the extended case, but then I got a first hand lesson in the volitile nature of li-ion batteries. After the 2 FOOT FLAME, which looked like a smoke flare going off, this MESS is what was left of the battery ... What caused that? Believe it or not, it was LIGHTLY nicking it with the tip of my jewlers screwdriver! It doesn't take much."
http://i500.nopdesign.com/hw/ifire.jpg [nopdesign.com]
The complete story is here [nopdesign.com]; the flames start on page 2.
"Hello, Samsung? I would like 1000 units of your new Lithium-Ion bomb phone please. Do you ship to Chechnya?"
There ARE documented cases... (Score:2, Interesting)
Just like ink jet printers cartrage suicide chip! (Score:3)
Marketing (Score:2)
WARNING: Using non-OEM print cartridges may result in a really, really big explosion. You'll be set on fire, and the heat will give you very nasty burns.
U.S. Navy (Score:3, Informative)
Oh Lord . . . (Score:4, Funny)
Bless this thy Holy Hand Phone of Antioch, that with it thou may burnest thy faces of thine enemies into little tiny bits, in thy mercy.
weird timing (Score:3, Interesting)
It's been charged longer with no ill effects, and it's using the original Nokia battery.
Re:My Cellphone is Cool....no really. (Score:4, Informative)
With NiCad batteries, this means several amps of current through a wire mean to handle perhaps
That means heat.
It doesn't mean the cellphone will spontaneously set on fire. It will only happen if the phone is damaged to the point the battery is shorted.
Re:My Cellphone is Cool....no really. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:My Cellphone is Cool....no really. (Score:2)
Re:This is Satan... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:This is Satan... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Fire Marshall Bill (Score:2)
Fire Marshall Bill pushes send, and the phone begins to glow. "Like any piece of sofffisticated equipment, care must be taken to ensure proper and long lasting operation!" says Bill, as the phone explodes leaving his face and hand blackened and covered in tiny peices of plastic, LCD glass, and a set of number buttons embedded in his left cheek.
Re:Nokia says... (Score:3)
Now I suppose Nokia could go out, and try to purchase examples of all these cheap batteries that have flooded the market, take them apart and test them to see if they are safe. And then they could pu