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EE Recalls All Power Bar Chargers Over Fire Safety Risk (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: British mobile network EE is recalling every one of its promotional Power Bar smartphone chargers amid safety fears that they may overheat and blow up. The portable blue charging tubes were released in April of this year as a way to allow customers to charge their phones on the go. The mobile carrier, which also runs the Orange and T-Mobile brands, said that it had made the decision after reports of a very small number of incidents where Power Bars have overheated in circumstances that could cause a fire safety risk.
Maybe you can still get your phone charged using a Clif Bar or Nutri-grain Apples and Cinnamon?
Or hows this a problem then?
I'm guessing that "electronics that burn your house down" are the must-have present here in the UK this Christmas. Just a couple of days ago, we had Amazon UK offer refunds to most customers who had bought a hoverboard from them, advising them to destroy the offending item due to fire-safety concerns associated with the plug and charger.
Are standards of cheap electrical goods with outsourced manufacturing falling to new lows? I'd have thought that plugs and chargers were fairly important things to get right - and probably not the most difficult things, either.
A couple of years ago I was involved in a product recall of a server line where a backplane could overheat and start to burn. There were three cases among a few thousand shipped and the cause was a PCB made in China. Nothing new here, it's probably a matter of statistics now that this stuff is made by the gazillions.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
"...amid safety fears that they may overheat and blow up."
Well, that's not good. I mean, they're not supposed to do that, are they?
Some people just want to watch the world burn.
I think it's more down to a new found penchant for hauling around huge blocks of lithium. I've had an e-cig battery blow on me and it was scary as hell, so when my mate asked me to repair his 14Ah power bank / jump-starter I was more than a little wary. There's circa 600kJ's sitting in the palm of your hand and it only needs a good hard knock to start spitting it all out.
Perhaps it is time the UK start wiring their houses with real circuit breakers and not just a common ring bus?
I've had an e-cig battery blow on me
so stop sub-ohming, you vapehole.
What does the house working have to do with it? The problem is the charger device itself.
What about the one I ate this morning? I don't think it was charged.
It was a ~2ohm single coil mod.
I don't imagine that the so-called hoverboards are unique to the UK market, so I'm kind of wondering how come this hasn't cropped up elsewhere. Could it be that safety standards are just a bit harsher here than elsewhere? Or did the Chinese manufacturers for some reason manage to give everyone else in the world non-exploding chargers with fuses in the plugs? Noidea if EE's power bar thing is unique to the UK, but I guess that's more likely than with the hoverboards.
My new favorite term is "douche flute"
The UK plug is the only one with fuse requirements
I don't imagine that the so-called hoverboards are unique to the UK market, so I'm kind of wondering how come this hasn't cropped up elsewhere.
It has been happening in other places. There's an investigation under way from the CPSC in the US after a dozen or so reports of fires. You just haven't been paying attention to all the news stories.
I get all my news from slashdot. Are you saying I'm missing out on some important stuff?!!?