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Power United Kingdom

EE Recalls All Power Bar Chargers Over Fire Safety Risk (thestack.com) 27

An anonymous reader writes: British mobile network EE is recalling every one of its promotional Power Bar smartphone chargers amid safety fears that they may overheat and blow up. The portable blue charging tubes were released in April of this year as a way to allow customers to charge their phones on the go. The mobile carrier, which also runs the Orange and T-Mobile brands, said that it had made the decision after reports of a very small number of incidents where Power Bars have overheated in circumstances that could cause a fire safety risk.
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EE Recalls All Power Bar Chargers Over Fire Safety Risk

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17, 2015 @10:21AM (#51137099)

    Maybe you can still get your phone charged using a Clif Bar or Nutri-grain Apples and Cinnamon?

    • I switched from Power Bar to Clif Bar over a decade ago, but that was close to my first thought, but I assumed it was some sort of promotional product with Power Bar advertising. And they do describe it as a promotional product, so it is ambiguous.

      Lithium batteries to charge other lithium batteries, it seems a bit silly to me from the start. This is what the people who buy whatever they're offered for sale end up with; they have devices without removable batteries that don't last long enough for their uses,

  • by RogueyWon ( 735973 ) on Thursday December 17, 2015 @10:39AM (#51137239) Journal

    I'm guessing that "electronics that burn your house down" are the must-have present here in the UK this Christmas. Just a couple of days ago, we had Amazon UK offer refunds to most customers who had bought a hoverboard from them [bbc.co.uk], advising them to destroy the offending item due to fire-safety concerns associated with the plug and charger.

    Are standards of cheap electrical goods with outsourced manufacturing falling to new lows? I'd have thought that plugs and chargers were fairly important things to get right - and probably not the most difficult things, either.

    • A couple of years ago I was involved in a product recall of a server line where a backplane could overheat and start to burn. There were three cases among a few thousand shipped and the cause was a PCB made in China. Nothing new here, it's probably a matter of statistics now that this stuff is made by the gazillions.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      I think it's more down to a new found penchant for hauling around huge blocks of lithium. I've had an e-cig battery blow on me and it was scary as hell, so when my mate asked me to repair his 14Ah power bank / jump-starter I was more than a little wary. There's circa 600kJ's sitting in the palm of your hand and it only needs a good hard knock to start spitting it all out.

  • Some people just want to watch the world burn.

  • Perhaps it is time the UK start wiring their houses with real circuit breakers and not just a common ring bus [wikipedia.org]?
    • What does the house working have to do with it? The problem is the charger device itself.

    • UK: Could real circuit breakers prevented this?

      No. This was a problem with power bars (supplementry battery packs), not with mains adaptors.

  • by fredrated ( 639554 ) on Thursday December 17, 2015 @11:46AM (#51137735) Journal

    What about the one I ate this morning? I don't think it was charged.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke

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