Slashdot Mirror
Flaming Cellphones
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?"
Call the fire brigade!
So my cellphone just burst into flames. Does anyone on Slashdot have an idea what I should do?
So...what...are they pink? Do they have pictures of Tinky Winky on them? Or what? :)
My journal has hot
This is only proof that there is a god, and he does not approve of cell-phoning and driving.
www.olin.edu
Are we supposed to welcome the cell phones as our new overlords, or the off-brand batteries?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
was she talking on the cellphone on a bus/train/mass transit system?
if so all I can say is:
"hah hah"
If you work for the CIA, do not take company messages while drinking coffee and browsing CDs at the record store.
From a Dutch article*
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
While the chances of something like this happening are rather unlikely, it's situations like this that are the reasoning for those "we hold no liability for 3rd party components" disclaimers.
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.
I didn't even realize cellphone batteries did get hot.
My motorola flip phone has never got warm from usse or changing batteries or anything else.
Get a different phone.
clifgriffin > blog
I'd like to see THAT happen in class!
Nobody calls me you insensitive clod.
"Derp de derp."
It's the MPAA out for revenge for the bad text messages reported recently. Watch out, lest your speakers burst into flame for playing illegal .mp3s. I think giving them the ability to light phones ablaze was too big a concesion for them, as punishment just for badmouthing their IP, but IP is IP, right?
SAILING MISHAP
"Fear not young lovers, I am Fire Marshall Bill Burns and I notice your cell phone is getting a little warm south of the antenna there, son."
Anyone else here remember Jim Carey at the height of his career?
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Apparently, whoever she was talking to hit the "ignite cellphone" button...
I worked with some people who were simulating battery-powered electronics. The program had an error message of "Device is on fire". People would call up the tech support for the simulator and ask what the error message means (perhaps they thought it was like Guru Meditation errors or something equally geek-funny). It meant, literally, that the simulated battery is on fire.
;)
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.
Gentoo Sucks
I like my beer cold, my TV loud, and my cellphones flaming .
Relax folks. It was just Chief Quimby delivering an assignment to the Inspector.
"Derp de derp."
I'm wondering. Do you have to hit these phones from behind?
"this message will self destruct in 3...2...1...grrrr"
Suddenly the opening line to one of my favorite songs doesn't seem so far fetched.
This brings a whole new level to the concept of starting a flame war or having a heated discussion on the phone.
It also opens up the potential for cellphones to be sold as firestarters for campers outside of the transmission range, a wholly untapped market.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!
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
http://www.nokia.ca/english/products/user_manuals
Many LiOn batteries include built in gas gauging and over current protection. This costs about $1 in parts. Dallas makes some of the gas gauging parts -- DS2438 for instance. The gas gauging component is connected to the telephone via a 1 wire + ground interface. The overcurrent protection circuit is entirely internal. If the clone vendor wanted to save several nickels they could leave out the overcurrent chip and nobody would be the wiser until the battery shorts out.
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.
.. Blub falls right in the middle of the abstractness continuum. -- Paul Graham
Perhaps some slashdot readers have had a similar experience?
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.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Interesting. So, the smart thing to do is hang up your phone when it gets a lot hotter than usual!
"Sorry, honey, I gotta go. My phone is about to spontaneously combust."
" We later heard she had used a replacement battery"
I guess that when you buy cheap crap from the Ukraine you get burned, literally.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
I like burning the phone bills.
Speech: Free
Beer: $699.00
This happened because she used a battery that was not compatible nor sanctioned by Nokia.
How is this not an obvious barrell of BS?
What next, is HP going to claim that replacement inkjet cartridges contain asbestos?
Batteries can overheat and burst if handled incorrectly or if struck by lightning. Nokia is just diverting attention to their own peeve, and spreading FUD in order to make large profits on replacement batteries.
...at the movie theather. Asshole who doesnt turn off his cellphone, gets a call, answers it and BOOM, the fireworks illuminate the room. Yes, entertainment at its finest!
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:
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/
Please help metamoderate.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Come now, isn't it a little insensitive to have a huge discussion on the sexual orientation of cellphones. I mean, I didn't even realize that's what they meant by phone sex!
Cheap battery + Expensive Cell phone = little boom!
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...
It's actually a little bit surprising that it *doesn't* happen more frequently, partly thanks to improving manufacturing techniques. Note that all battery manufacturers use to label batteries about this particular risk, and ask the customer to take care not to recharge batteries with improper equipment. After all batteries are storing anergy, and guess what? It can be released in a nice explosion...
This problem is one of the risks that electric car manufacturers have to solve; not that fuel-based cars are any safer, but there is much that we are still learning about batteries. We'll probably hear about a few accidents over the next years as electric cars become more common. The explosions in this case - if they ever happen -will be far more dangerous, because car batteries are considerably bigger than cell phone ones...
Excerpt from a related story ...
"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."
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
yeap.. it was definately a short in the battery. Back when I was working in the wireless industry I actually saw the plastic on the back of some guys 5120 start to discolor and sort of melt.
to the cellphone of that guy that goes around asking,"can you hear me now?" If only life were so sweet.
"At first, we thought it was just another snake cult."
Sounds like a good office prank. :)
...that if you don't buy "Genuine Quality Nokia Batteries", your phone will burst into flames!!! Come'on people, don't we see a little self-serving FUD here? Doesn't Lexmark claim that off-brand ink catridges will make your printer burst into flames?
BATTERY ERROR! Non-Nokia battery detected! This phone will self-destruct in 10 seconds...9, 8...
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
And you could potentially call someone on the phone and then detonate it when they answer. Orwell never had it this easy.....
People should really wait a while after huffing gas before they use their cell phones.
For this very reason, I modded my phone. Phew...
... )...
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 using a surgical (dont try this at home kids) scalpel to cut out the phone keys from the tape. It worked.
Now the temp problem was solved, but this fan is loud as hell, I think my next cooling mod would include heat pipes.
The other mods I've done on my phone (apart from turning the faint red led to bright blue red that shouldnt be shined into eyes
Well, my phone is now pimped up in a coat of UV paint, thus if I take it to a club, it's the most attractive thing to chicks who just cant take their hands off my
Nah.. she downloaded a clip from a Madonna song to use as the ringer, and the RIAA is getting REALLY aggressive about protecting their artist's IP.
this was a concern during the solar car rayce this summer. apparently stanford's battery pack had some problems with its battery protection circuits, and there was a fire in the car at some point. bags of ice were later used to keep things cool across arizona. this sounds untenable for cell phones however.
"In all cases it was caused by a replacement battery which was not a Nokia accessory. The manufacturers violated security requirements which should prevent it from heating up after short circuiting, for instance, after it was dropped."
reminds me of stuff like this( from http://www.bugnet.com/alerts/bugalert_11400.html):
'According to Netscape, the problem rests not with Communicator but instead with IIS. "What we found is that during the step up handshake IIS violates the SSL [Secure Socket Layer] 3 specification for performing this operation," explained Chris Nalls, senior product manager for client outbound marketing at Netscape. "It sends a request to communicate that's too short, which causes Communicator to crash." '
Was this truly an accident? Or, is Nokia intentionally "short circuiting" the battery for some reason?
First, I saw the "electrostatic discharge" labels at the Mobil pumps today. They've been there a while. For good reason. They wouldn't alter old warning labels and stick them on every pump if there wasn't a reason. Business don't like spending money.
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!
-----
We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell them stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe. So, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them. 'Give me five bees for a quarter', you'd say. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah...the important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war; the only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.
"...cellphone burst into flame...Perhaps some slashdot readers have had a similar experience?"
Please refer this kind of questions to Darwin Awards
This makes me wonder, i recently bought a pack of 20 AA batteries by a small unknown company (can be misleading since the package looks and the name sounds like it is duracell) at a dollar store (yes!!! 20 AA batteries for $1 CDN) ... seems to work fine in my remote control, but im a little worried now
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
if cellphone manufacturers didnt gouge and rip us off for batteries people wouldnt buy 3rd party and this wouldnt happen.
usually its cheaper to throw away the phone than replace batteries at their prices
what next ? printer carts that explode ?
Can you EAR me now?
Good!
Or perhaps it was something like this?
Stop, drop, and rollover minutes
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 :)
I can honestly say that though I've never seen one, I'd be more than willing to spray a thousand gallons of water at say, 300psi through a 1 1/4 nozzel at anyone with a flaming cell phone still being held to their face.
* 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.
Until you see it happen right?
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 machine inside, instead of outside; build up of vapor and poof a rather pretty little lightshow for us all.
Om, nomnomnom...
"Stop that man!!! He's got a CELL PHONE hidden in his shoe!!!"
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Anybody that uses a Madonna ringtone certainly DESERVES to have their phone burst into flames! Of course, my phone plays Tocatta En Fugue in D Major every time somebody calls, so I probably shouldn't talk...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
If you crash due to receiving a malformed packet, it's still a serious bug in your software! It doesn't matter whether the packet was intentionally malicious or not. (And yes, I've crashed NT servers by sending them malformed SMB requests.) The cardinal rule in designing packet parsing routines is to assume the sender is malicious and has access to your source!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
That's all I have to say about that.
In fact I'm using my phone to view Slashdot at this very moment and it's...... #### NO CARRIER ####
We all know the artist's IP. It's 192.168.1.26
I was once involved in a similar incident, though the cause wasn't battery related. I was on an away mission, collecting soil samples for later study, when the captain ordered an immediate wide-range phaser volley directly on my communicator's position.
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.
Can you hear me... OW!!
Whoa - I first thought it was written:
The user of the phone had bought the battery at a flamemarket .
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
A guy goes to the doctor with both sides of his face badly burned. The doc asked him what happened. He says he was ironing his clothes when the phone rang and he picked up the hot iron and held it to his head.
So the doc asks what happened to the other side of his face.
"I had to call an ambulance."
Juding from pop culture, as a teen disgruntled with such, the phones.
Banaaaana!
April 1, 2012 Today, billions of sell phones spontaneosly combusted after the payload of a "worm" was devlivered.
stuff
To get them to do this on command?? Perfect for rude users in theaters, restaraunts, etc! Use the detonate destination feature :)
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.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
You refer to ERP (effective radiated power) at less than 6/10 W. The power consumed is way more. Don't get me to lying about how much, but it's an easy equation (battery capacity/time to consume). All of the heat you feel, the lighting, etc all has to come out of the battery.
These batteries are primarily lithium-based...all it takes is a little air (read "oxydizer") getting into the battery, reaching the metallic lithium, and fire or explosion is possible.
We had begun research into producing our own lithium-based cells when I was at AT&T - the fire hazard of the lithium during manufacturing was a major hurdle.
Just guessing, but a broken battery case and resulting air infiltration may be to blame.
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. Jon Krakauer
... to drive and chat on the damned thing.
Let this be a lesson to you.
"I'm not ashamed I can't function in society like I'm supposed to." - Paul Westerberg
This nasty incident has interesting things to say about current-day capitalism.
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 involving more and more complex/precise technologies engineered by companies that are very concerned by the prospect of facing class-action suits for personal injury that might eliminate their profits from even a stellar project.
This wild-west aspect comes from having large fish working alongside small fish in tight spaces. Back-alley manufactures are bound to do some cheating: it's hard to imagine having a bunch of intelligent, underpaid, job-hungry workers with health-problems being very good for industrial security and the results show up in the decades-old, made-in-Asia black-market for counterfeit products of all kinds from fake Levi's jeans to unlicensed, ultra-cheap component electronics and 'fly-by-night,' or 'botchitt-and-scarper' operations remove the fear of lawsuits from cutting corners when working with potentially shrapnel-producing battery chemistries.
Oddly enough, this isn't the only such incident seen on Slashdot recently. The current story only attracts more attention because of the spectacular personal injury factor.
Some months ago, Slashdot carried a story on some capacitors which caused problems that brought about a motherboard recall. They were all the result of Chinese industrial espionage of Japanese processes leading first one company and then others to misunderstand how to make an advanced electrolyte compound.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
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?
We've gone from printers to cell phones!
Here is an explanation of the original lp0 on fire message.
a few years ago Dell recalled a number of laptop batteries due to similar concerns. This problem is most definately not limited to cell phones. :)
Will Stokes Album Shaper http://albumshaper.sf.net
So, first they cause tumors in pigs, now they're flamming, what's next, herpies?
---
Lousy rotten karmic retribution.
Subject says it all
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
I'll try and summarize what has been stated correctly by others here.
Cell phones causing fires at gas pumps is an urban legend. See snopes.com
RIAA in old R`lyeh lang means "REALLY BAD BAD DAEMON"
Where's V of Victory when we need him?
isn't that kinda like "you get what you pay for" ?
Geez. I made a comment. I said I'd never heard of a such a thing and maybe...just maybe...they needed to switch phones to avoid it.
clifgriffin > blog
Those of us salivating all over the Samsung SPH-i500 PalmPDA/phone (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
The complete story is here; 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?"
One simple rule for its versus it's
Lithium batts can catch fire if overcharged, and can explode if shorted. I know of one guy whowas charging a lithium pack, and at some point the charger reset (power glitch?), and when it did, it set the cell count WRONG. this caused a garage fire. Newer cells will overheat and 'puff up', rather than explode, but if you use Li cells, you need to ba familiar with what you are doing. I think most of the dangers are lessened, and most of these accidents can be chocked up to not advanced enough technology. There are guys getting 20+ minute flights on model helis using Li batts.
What's next? Articles about how someone cut themselves on broken glass after dropping a bottle?!?
It seems that warnings that are false should not be used; if most warnings do not mean anything, then people will become indifferent to warnings.
I was just looking over one of my favorite model train manufacturer's web page and found a mention that the Proposition 65 warning is nearly moot.
At any rate, warnings don't seem to have hindered alcohol consumption or smoking...
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Yeah my work phone, a Nokia 3285, gets very warm when used a lot even in digital areas but especially in analog mode...then again so do I ;-P
'Do not use non proprietary hardware we have ways to get even!' When will this 'by using non-proprietary hardware overcharging shit hit the fan'. Someone is going to get seriously hurt by this manufacturing sabotage bullshit. Then who do you sue the cell phone manufacture for sabotaging the battery or the company that tried to create a compatable product. I have boycotted proprietary hardware/software and hope we responsible /.ers can start something like a ANTI DELIBERATE INCOMPATABILITY PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE and HARDWARE INFORMATION TRANSFER SITE or (AntiDIP-SHITS) to increase consumer awareness about this kind of bullshit. Ralph Nader on steroids. The sooner the better.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
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.
I believe the U.S. Navy prohibited the use of lithium batteries due to safety concerns. Later this was relaxed to allow their use if stringent engineering and safety standards were followed. See NAVSEA S9310-AQ-SAF-010.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Does anyone have any additional information on this? If true, could it be related to this fire incident?
have any of my cell phones gotten warm on any occasion. I'd be concerned if I could notice extra heat being generated. So far though, I've only owned a Samsung SPH-N300 (Sprint, CDMA), a T68i (GSM, AT&T) and a Nokia 3650 (GSM, AT&T). None have ever felt warm to the touch unless warmed by external sources.
:)
My 12" PowerBook on the other hand is always warm
The Powerbooks with the defective batteries were the 5300 series. The laptops were recalled before they went into volume production. No customers were harmed by these laptops. The details of this event are easily available online. Google for "Powerbook 5300 fire"
-Mark
I used to work in a Gas Station. Sparks where the reason phones are not permitted on the premises. Its the same reason you cant leave your car idling there. I know everybody ignores it. I do.
some peoples moderation does not include weed
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.
Gasoline fumes are almost as flammable as natural gas. While this isn't as much of an issue in Oregon where they have trained people pumping gas (and thus not spilling it everywhere and keeping fumes down to a minimum), it doesn't change the fact it's just plain stupid to pump gas while running the engine or using a cellphone, two-way radio or smoke in a gas station. Police will give you a ticket for even trying if they see you doing it here, and gas stations won't serve you if you are. Self-service is banned in Oregon for fire prevention and air quality reasons, so if you piss off the station, no fuel for you.
Help us build a better map!
No, Tocatta's proably in the public domain by now...
$ echo "ceci n'est pas une pipe" | sed -Ee 's/(eci n|pas )//g'
The solution....Don't use lead-acid batteries (or others containing water) in cell phones.
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
on february 2003 a man was injuried by the explosion of his Nokia cellphone battery pack.
..I have one of these in my Nokia phone.
In the articles I found there's no mention about the batteries manufacturer (they were not the
original Nokia ones though), however the most widely known replacement batteries in Italy are
made by "Cellular Line".
Yuck!
Damn, I am found out, I was trying to dial McBride.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
C'mon.....finish the job:
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.
I imagine that if and when a battery from insert-big-cellphone-manufacturer-here lights someone's phone on fire, they slap down a large NDA-required settlement offer so fast that people can hear the sonic boom for miles around.
Just as an exercise in curiosity I took apart an old 1997 Nokia 918 nicad battery There are no chips in the design. Funny the thing I got out when some of the other guys using newer lion powered shit couldn't. I used to work isolated in the North of BC and that old Nokia was great hands down it beat the newer models. My conclusion is, on this model the cell phone controls the charge and there is no way for it to tell between batteries unless the wiring and simple component values are completely wrong. The circuit is just a resistor and diode design and would be no problem to clone safely at all. I cannot speak for the newer lion high power user hyped out mega watt shit though.
So now they might very well be using control chips on the battery that talk back to the charging chips on the phone itself. This makes a lot of sense if you want to screw the users into having to use your battery or risk catastrophic failures.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Listen...it sounds like a cellphone on overload! RUN!
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!".)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
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. Only buying original accessories for her new phone, I trust.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
I don't remember exact time (I think its last year) 2 cell phone explode in Turkey. One of them cuts owner fingers.
Cell phone batteries explodes because of the miss assembled battery packs.
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
mod this guy up also....adds an extra chuckle to that ALREADY funny joke...
......a Flaming Mo?
Great Flaming Cell Phones Batman!!!
Did anyone else have visions of Gillete speaking up as well? If you don't use our replacement heads for the razors, you run the risk of your face catching fire!!! :)
To be slightly fair to Nokia, I understand they can/will only ceritfy with some brands of batteries..
They will toss everything except your already correctly accessorized cell.
Something I happen to know...
I can imagine the battery exploding because it heats significantly in operation. There are actually valves in official batterys to exhaust the excess pressure.
However, in this case that doesn't seem to be the case.
Apparently the lady dropped the battery. A shock can cause the tiny li-ion cell to short.
Or conduct from wrong place, causing short when operated. Official batterys are guarded against accident's like this even if the cells are damaged.
Just take their word when they say you really should use only approved batterys.
Bot Assisted Blogging
Here's my little tid bit for this topic. I've been working for a privately owned Verizon Wireless store location for over a year, on and off. So it's really been about two years now since I've been dealing with the owner. Never have I heard of a cell phone catching fire or exploding. Yes, the battery does get warm in analog areas. Here's the reason why. When cellular service was first created it was made with an analog network, which is what land line phones run off. The old analog 'brick phones' run off copper batteries. The newer batteries are lithium ion; they are designed for digital phones in a digital network. When you go into a rural area and your phone slips into analog the phone needs to work a bit more to keep itself on that network. It's a secondary network for the phone, it going to make the phone work a bit more to retain the signal. So it drains the battery twice as fast. Which means the battery isn't doing what it was made for and gets warm. Sometimes a little hot but never burning to the touch. Now my viewpoint on cell phones overheating and catching fire is due to someone's stupidity. Seriously. I've had customers come into the store with burning hot phones because they leave them over the vent in their car instead of in their pocket and then turn on the heat. I can understand how a battery not created by the manufacture is not going to perform as smoothly but the batteries are tested, they are meant to be safe. It's not going to explode unless you do something really stupid with it. Now I understand that many of you are aware that intelligence is lacking in this world, yet you'd be utterly surprised at how many people completely destroy their cell phones. Plus there is the fact that if someone does something wrong with the phone they usually aren't going to admit to it. They try to write it off as a manufacture defect so they can get money back and their medical expenses paid for. Maybe there may be a few rare cases of a cellphone catching fire. Though it wouldn't have to apply to just the battery, it's electronics. It's faulty, and the older it gets the more fragile it becomes. However, for all of you reading this I doubt you'd have to worry. You're reading Slashdot after all. News for Nerds, the more intelligent flock of the human race. You're not going to be careless with your cellphone. It's your nifty toy, you don't mistreat it. So continue your every day geeky life worry free. Your cellphone isn't going to blow up in the middle of a call. And well, if for some reason it does, you can't come back to me and tell me I was wrong as you most likely would be among the dead or at least incapable of speaking. (Oh, and just for a bit of company pride, Verizon Wireless was rated #1 in customer sercive and our new two way system Push to Talk is very nifty.) Hoped this helped clear up a few things for those of you worried. Have any more questions? Just respond to my post and I'll be happy to supply answers. Take care. Treat your cell phones right. Be the happy geeks you all are. ~Morin'stal
-- (me): Root! One should bow down before it. It is powerful. -- (my hopeless twin): You mean a guy's *ahem*?
"... typical rotten egg smell."
Heh, and here I thought battery packs start emitting an increasingly high pitched sound before detonating.
Star Trek: no longer just at breakfast
I can only imagine what the "flaming cell phone" looks like, but I figure it must be easy to accesorise with. Now the likes of Charles Nelson Reily, Divine and JM J Bullock can have a cell phone that emphasizes their unique charm. No longer will Harvey Firestein or RuPaul have to settle for a boring grey Nokia. It's too bad that Liberace will miss out on a phone that would have gone smashingly with his mink furs. With shows like "Queer Eye", "Queer as Folk" and "Sesame Street" making gay mainstream, it's only fitting they have their own phone to put on "vibrate".
One day I met a friend for lunch, and he said that he'd tried to call me but reached my voice mail. I pulled the phone out of my pocket and discovered it was dead. A glance at the battery showed that there had apparently been a short circuit in the pack that burned insulation on wiring and vaporized a small piece of the wiring. It was close to one of the actual lithium-ion celss, so I am very lucky that the cell did not catch fire in my pocket.
I don't know for a fact that the official Nokia packs are any better engineered than the aftermarket once. But I was very disturbed that the pack did not contain a fuse in series with the cells to avoid this type of problem. Burning lithium cells are very dangerous.
I wish I'd taken photos of the burned pack, but I didn't yet have a digital camera at the time, and it didn't seem important enough to justify buying a disposable camera.
But do you think they put millions into battery design? Maybe they should...
Interestingly the documents p.23 of 35 in pdf seem to show Dell shelling out a $30 coupon to each owner of the flaming laptop batteries and more to the flaming lawyers... Perhaps this explains Panasonic's reluctance to sell dangerous batteries to "just anyone"...
I read an article a year or two ago about a guy here in Japan who was shocked by the phone in his shirt pocket when his sweat seaped in. There are tales about how the electro magnetic field can cause pace makers to malfunction. Well, this is a a way that these phones can cause a heart attack, which it did, if I remember correctly. Needless to say, I won't carry mine in a pocket.
it is true! ive bought one of those cheap batteries for a siemens and it heats A LOT!!
The incident, which occurred Tuesday, happened after the woman dropped her phone in a music store in central Amsterdam. It caught fire when she picked it up and switched it back on, a police spokesman said.
I don't know about you guys... but... I don't mess with electronics after they've caught on fire... Especially when it's strapped to a battery with acid that could make face look something like Michael Jackson...
_________ Help me get a PSP!
3. An individual suffered burns to the thigh and groin as fumes ignited when the phone, which was in his pocket, rang during fuelling.
While a tragic incident, I cannot help imagining his ring tone was "Great Balls Of Fire".
Ni MH Batteries also overheat whilst charging.
When NiMH batteries first apeared we who used them commercially had to purchase all new chargers for them. The batteries have a nasty habit of overheating whilst charging, the chargers have a built in thermistor system to cut off the charging current if this occures.
As someone pointed out in an earlier post, if aftermarket manufacturers want to save a few cents then............
Moe files a lawsuit...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Exploding Siemens?
Yes, you'd be really fucked if this happened to you..
Urban myth territory recently covered in the Australian media: http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s9118 63.htm
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.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Mine plays the "Imperial March" from Star Wars. Customers look at me funny when it goes off. I find their lack of faith disturbing...
;-)
(But it beats the looks I used to get when it played the theme from "Leisure Suit Larry"
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Most people in the UK actually replace their phone at least once a year, either because they get a free upgrade from the network in return for signing a new 12 month contract, or simply because of fashion. The dead battery issue rarely arises!
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Don't know about exploding batteries, but exploding gas stations are certainly a hoax:
http://www.snopes.com/autos/hazards/gasvapor.asp
Australia's fantastic Media Watch TV program did an investigative piece on all the stories about mobile phones blowing up at gas pumps. They found that all stories were based on urban legend, and that journalists had fed off other hoax stories published. Gas companies had even published brochures (that they later withdrew) citing cases where poor motorists had been burned to a crisp while using their mobile phone at the gas pump. The fact of the matter was there simply were NO cases worldwide where a mobile phone had triggered an explosion. Here's a transcript of the story.
Unfortunatly the article is in norvegian.
:) however he threw the phone on the floor when it started smoking, so noone was hurt.
(He _was_ using an unoriginal battery too)
Appearantly the explosion was powerful enough to make shrapnel put marks in the ceiling
Nokia are of course going to jump all over something like this, seeing as they make a staggeringly huge profit on their own-brand batteries and peripherals.
;)
It's like third party PlayStation memory cards - maybe some really cheap ones are unreliable, but Sony would have you believe that in 99% of cases if it doesn't have an official logo then it'll burn down your house.
(P.S. You can put your phone into *analog* mode?! Maybe you should get a camera peripheral to share your cave paintings with friends.
Preferences > Homepage > Customize stories on homepage > Authors > Zonk > Uncheck
Ken Charles Barger, 47, accidentally shot himself to death in December in Newton, N.C. Awakening to the sound of a ringing telephone beside his bed, he reached for the phone but grabbed instead a Smith & Wesson .38 Special, which discharged when he drew it to his ear.
Buy it quick, or the offer goes up in smoke!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Frankly, I've had no trouble at all with my cell phone. In fact, I'm talking on it right now as I type, and its working great. Cool, strong signal, not a problem to repo----
OH MY GOD!#&*($&!#$ MY FACE!&#$()!# IT BURNS@&#*$)! OH JESUS GOD MY HAND IS ON FIRE TOO!#&*$()! CALL FOR HELP PLEASE SOMEONE MY HAIR JUST CAUGHT TOO#&*$()! OH MY GOOOOOOD!&*#$#!&*)$&*!#()
I picked up my nokia 6150 yesterday after leaving it on the charger over night. By morning (on from 12am to 6:30am) it was too hot to touch, and now it won't turn on.
It's been charged longer with no ill effects, and it's using the original Nokia battery.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
I know many manufacturers do their best to stop third party parts or consumables from working, but I've never heard of a product that attempts to set the unauthorized parts on fire..
This clearly was an assasination attempt by the US Government.
How did Helen Keller burn her ear?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Wha? With Toonces as my co-pilot, what could possibly go wrong?
Ugh. Yeah. I'd forgotten about that particular nightmare. That was horrible.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Oh... non-manufacturer batteries are bad for the phone? And silly me thought that having a RF transmitter by my skull didnt send RF into the brain doing who knows what....
Regards, we will all use our cellphones as they will (along with a pack-a-day smoking habit) will undoubtably remove the last 10 (albeit, diaper wearing) years off our lives.
Where do i sign?
It's not what you know; It's what you can find out.
and why don't blind people skydive? (It scares the shit out of thier dogs)
This story is probably true. The same thing happened to my spouse's relative. It was a Nokia, and the batteries were some cheap kind, wildly marketed here in Czech republic. The burns were minor but definitely required medical care. The shock was, of course immense.