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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?"
Dial 911 to report the fire.
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.
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
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 .
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!!
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
...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!
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."
In fact I'm using my phone to view Slashdot at this very moment and it's...... #### NO CARRIER ####
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."