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?"
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
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
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:
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 ?
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.
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.
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? :-)
It is a conspiracy, flat out. There's no need for theories on the matter. There are plenty of more "dangerous" electronic components made by the same companies that produce LiIon cells (such as large value capacitors, certain transformer types, etc.) that can be purchased without goofy "designer agreements." The only reasonable explanation is some means of trying to control who gets to play in the ridiculous-markup game of aftermarket battery replacements. But all hope is not lost. There are plenty of sources for LiIon cells online for DIY'ers... just not from the original manufacturers (and typically not from the big parts vendors either: Mouser, Digikey, etc.) Probably the cheapest way to get your hands on them is liquidated (new, unused) battery packs from outdated cell phones, laptops, etc. Sometimes you'll also find companies selling or auctioning bulk cells themselves.
I have taken apart dozens of battery packs of all types and they all use the same handful of standardized solder-tab cell types. Of the LiIon's, perhaps the most popular cell I've run into is the 18650, which is a 5/4-AA size, 3.7v cell. Most standard-size laptop batteries use this cell. Also, many camcorders use them. (the standard capacity battery packs will simply have half as many cells). I know of some camcorder packs that sell in the $50 range with a SINGLE 18650 cell, which can be easily had in the $3-5 range. (I got some from liquidated battery packs for about $2/ea). A typical laptop battery might use 6-8 of them and cost $150-300.
Oh yeah: as for the gas station / cell phone explosion "myth", there is actually a very very small chance that this could happen. (but not for the bogus reasons specified by the urban legend) If a cell phone was drawing a high enough current and the battery somehow came loose, a very small spark could be generated. Under perfect conditions, this may be enough to ignite gasoline vapors. However, you could say this about any battery operated device. In real life, it has never been a problem. A true hazard at gas stations is the large static discharge possible due to the vehicle building a charge while driving from friction of the rubber wheels. So ideally, the vehicle chassis should be grounded to earth before operating the pump.
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.
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.