Slashdot Mirror
More Exploding Cellphones In The News
adityapandey writes "It's happened again. Yahoo News has another story on exploding cellphones. Most of these mishaps are blamed on counterfeit batteries and chargers. Recently, Kyocera recalled about 40,000 cellphones for free replacement, because of batteries overheating and venting superheated gases. Yet, cellphone makers claim that such incidents are too rare to care about. Shouldn't cellphone companies be making people aware of the hazards of usage?"
170 million cell phones and 83 reports of cell phones exploding or catching fire in the past two years. 83/170,000,000 = 4.88 x 10^-7. To me, this is way within acceptable margin of error or uncontrollability. Think about how many computer power supplies have shorted out and caught fire (i have had 2 at my job in the last year, and we only have 17 computers). It is a shame, and I am sure it is painful for the people and i do feel bad, but lets not get out of hand with this.
83 cell phones have exploded or caught fire--but there are millions that haven't, so it is not a big deal.
Hmmm... How well did that logic work against Ephedra or Firestone Wilderness AT tires?
low level radiation, etc... My old Nokia phone used to make my monitor flicker really bad if a call was coming in and would actually turn on my cordless electric shaver if it was near by. (Yes, I got rid of it)
What if cell malware like Skulls could be used to cause the battery to explode? Perhaps by modifying the firmware to overcharge or overload the battery? A well-written worm would have them going off like popcorn...
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
The odds are 100million to one that your cell phone will explode, you think people will care about those odds?
Shouldn't cellphone companies be making people aware of the hazards of usage?
I used to work for a phone company that did a recall on the Kyocera 7135 (apparently no exhaust was installed on the battery).
All I can say is that under your contract they wipe themselves clean of *evreything* that could possibly happen and it is then the responsibility of the user. If you ever try to make a case other wise they will refer you to your contract, store you bought it from (or likely in this case undertaker) and tell you to shove it or go though mazes of 'pass the buck'.
Trust me (or check *your* contract) they cover their ass nice and clean. Of course most companies will put on a good public face and say even though its not our shit we will be happy to tell you all how to shovel it.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
Kyocera made about $2.7B US in profit last year. If they say "Our cell phones are dangerous", they'll loose sales. If they instead, let one or two people blow up every year, they only have to pay out a couple million in lawsuit damages each year. Do the math.
Despite what the storey headline says, the cell-phone industry is not well served by telling everyone that their products could explode and cause injury.
So they're not going to make sure to tell consumers about it unless they have no choice. And until they can be shown it really happens with their products which are used as designed, they may not believe it.
In reality, the way industry will make this decision is a cost-benefit analysis. In the airline industry, for example, wether or not to do a refit/new safety measure/etc is defined by a formula which measures how often it's likely to happen, and how much it costs if it did.
Using an average industry payout of $2mil/death (I think that's close), a $20 million upgrade will only happen if 10 people are expected to die from it. If the math says the upgrade is cheaper than paying for deaths, it gets done. If 3 people might die over 20 years, then the math says it's cheaper to let people die and pay settlements than to make the change.
It would be naive to think that the cell-phone industry is going to start running around saying "oh my god, they exploded".
Lost at C:>. Found at C.