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Nokia Investigating Reported Cell Phone Explosions
Iphtashu Fitz writes "C|Net's news.com is reporting that a man in the Netherlands suffered burns to his leg when the Nokia phone in his pants pocket exploded. This is the second reported incident of Nokia phones exploding, the first one being back in August when a Dutch woman's phone exploded in her hand. Nokia blamed the first incident on a third party battery that the woman was using and warned customers to only use Nokia parts and accessories with their phones. However this most recent explosion involved a new Nokia phone with a Nokia battery installed."
Is it about to explode? Any links on what signs to look for before your cell phone battery explodes? A search for 'exploding battery' on Nokia.com didn't return any results. Seems like they should take a more proactive approach and at least issue a warning. I couldn't find any.
Is that an exploding cell phone in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?
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*BOOM*
One things for sure, the N-Gage sure isn't exploding off the shelves.
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So you can say the message will self-destruct in 5 seconds.....
:P
They've been doing that in Mission Impossible for YEARS!
Join the TWIT army now!
...you know those two poor souls would be getting sued by the company right about now.
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I saw a local news report last night about the same thing. In Utah. I don't remember what channel it was on, but I assumed it was an isolated incident. Maybe there's something more to it...
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now Nokia can't use explosions as an excuse to sell more of their parts. And they thought putting 'prizes' in some of the phones would help them sell more.
-Tim Louden
Does anybody know what is actually exploding? Is it the battery? Is it the CPU? Is it one of the memory chips? "The telephone is exploding" is almost as vague "his house blew up".
bash$
what the Isreali Mossad used to (and probably still do) to suspected terrorist phones. Inside agent would swap his phone with one modified with plastic explosives. Then they would call the terrories, and when he put his ear to phone it would blow it off.
Perhaps they should ban these things on airliners.
At least untill they have safe alchohol filled fuel cells.
Instead of these new fangled battery things.
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Holland != Norway
Sig.i>
Remember, batteries are full of energy -- DUH! One defect and BAM! you have a little bomb after prolonged use. One reason you shouldn't throw them in a fire unless you are really drunk and have track shoes on.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Originally a tire company (!!!), Nokia has expanded quickly into other markets completely unrelated to the core of their business. Since they moved into the cell phone business, it seems to have become their top priority, however even this focus is slipping. They are turning towards building home entertainment appliances like set top boxes and TiVo-like devices. Unfortunately, like when they moved towards cell phones and their tire business suffered, their cell phone quality is sufferring because of this refocusing on new markets.
Sure hope he ain't singin' soprano with a cell phone exploding so close to the family blueprints.
Of course, this is an allegation that'd be hard to prove without insider verification. Or possibly, with some astute multimeter readings.
"This is the second reported incident of Nokia phones exploding, the first one being back in August when a Dutch woman's phone exploded in her hand." ;)
Actually, there have been two cases reported *this week* by The Register, as well as the one back in August, so it's not the second reported incident at all.
What I want to know is, when will we see the first exploding N-Gage?
...are both very volatile power systems. Being an remote-control electric flight enthusiast, I have heard too many stories about NiMH cells exploding ("it sounded like a shotgun blast!") and LiON batteries burning up cars. They are fine if they aren't damaged or defective -- but a NimH or especially LiON cells that have been damaged can be VERY dangerous.
Me, I'm waiting for nuclear-powered cellphones! Chernobyl in your pocket!
thelocust[dot]org
Q: How many phones do Nokia sell each year?
A: Millions
Q: How many of their phones explode each year?
A: 1 or 2
Q: How many cars are sold each year?
A: Millions
Q: How many people die on the roads each year?
A: Thousands
Conclusion: You have a greater chance of dying in a car crash than having your mobile phone explode.
The battery probably shorted against your keys or something in your pocket, reminds me of the time i picked up a cap from somewhere, nothing to powerful, but it was in a plastic bag which i placed in my pocket. Being thin plastic, both the leads poked through the bag and discharged into my leg, didn't hurt to much, but it was quite a shock. *ducks bricks resulting from bad pun*
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
The bad capacitors were faulty because some manufacturers opted for cheaper electolytics that expanded too much when they heated up... fixed volume, increasing pressure due to temperature, and they pop.
Nokia claims that they haven't changed materials... my guess is that these phones are getting hotter faster, probably drawing more current to run all the new features they keep adding, and the chemical batteries aren't reacting well.
The bad capacitors on motherboards just leaked. It's rare to get one exploding, in fact you only would in a PSU, where there's substantially more current than in a cell phone.
Batteries don't explode in a cell phone situation. It's physically just not possible. Perhaps if they were charging and provided with an external power source that's greater than they can handle. They can certainly leak, they can get warm, but there's no way a battery in use in a device without external power can just "explode"
Obviously the work of the Teleban...
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Marketing: 7th edition.
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The IDF deliveries to Fatah (et al.) got delivered elsewhere by mistake!
Whoops! Next: Suicide murderers in Helsinki.
(Where's Mannerheim when you need him?)
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According to this article the mobile phone companies prefer "venting with flame".
Coincidently I was looking at this stuff a couple of days ago. My Nokia 8250 had started turning itself off when in use. I wasn't sure whether it was the battery dying or the phone so I went to borrow a spare battery to test with.
When I opened the phone I noticed that rather than being flat the battery was bulging out as if it was pregnant. The bulge was enough that it was difficult to get the battery cover back on.
I now have a whole new phone (another Nokia, a 7250i).
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I wondered where the designers of the PowerBook 5300 went...
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
I don't remember the details, but something about heat building up during the charging vaporized something inside, making the case rupture spraying acid all over the place. Apparently, the phone could still explode a few minutes after it had been disconnected.
Accoding to this news (sorry, in Finnish) from today, Nokia denies that any original Nokia battery had ever exploded. Cheap third party batteries are a growing problem, because they usually lack safety components that prevent the battery from overheating when it's dropped or short circuiting.
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The heat you feel in a cell phone after talking on it for a time likely is due to the heating of the radio frequency (RF) power amplifier (PA) in the phone's transmitter, not the battery.
The PA must generate (depending on the type of phone you have--GSM, CDMA, etc.--the range to the cell tower, and other factors) somewhere between 0.2 and 1.0 Watts of RF power output. For lots of good reasons, and despite the best efforts of lots of engineers at lots of places, the conversion efficiency of battery power to RF power of cell phone PAs is around 35%--meaning that approximately two-thirds of the battery power consumed by the PA is converted to heat, instead of RF power, as you talk. Since everyone likes a small, light-weight cell phone, there is no dedicated heat sink (or external fan!) for the phone's PA; instead, most designs usually use the cell phone's frame to conduct the waste heat away from the PA. The frame, of course, conducts the heat to the outside world, which in this case includes your ear.
In many cases, to avoid the loss of an RF transmission line from the bottom to the top of the phone (which would result in even more inefficiency) the PA is placed next to the antenna, near the top of the phone--thus exacerbating the ear-heating effect. Since the heat generated by the PA has remained more-or-less constant over the years but the mass of the phone has decreased, the temperature the phone reaches in this situation has increased, making it more noticable. Handling this temperature rise is part of cell phone design, and one of the many tradeoffs that occur in them. Keep in mind that, since it is produced by energy stored in the battery that could otherwise be used to extend talk or standby time--two selling factors near and dear to the hearts of cell phone manufacturers--designers would eagerly reduce generated heat if they could do so without violating other design parameters, like product cost.
The type of heating you're experiencing sounds completely normal and safe to me. I would expect that heating of the battery itself would be unrelated to whether you talked on the phone or not. Rather, it would occur either (a) during charging with a defective or improperly designed charger, or (b) randomly, as a cell shorts out and its stored energy heats itself (and its neighbors) up, and the built-in protection circuitry either fails or (in off-brand batteries) is nonexistent. You can protect yourself against both of these possibilities (to below the lightning-strike and meteorite-collision probability levels) by simply buying and using name-brand batteries and chargers.