Flaming Mobile Phone Burns Woman

from the careful-with-that dept

If you think your mobile phone gets a little too hot sometimes, you haven't seen (felt?) anything. A woman in Amsterdam who tried to make a phone call on a Nokia she had just dropped ended up with burns on her face after the phone caught on fire! Ouch. Nokia quickly responded that it wasn't their fault, and insist that any fire would have to be the fault of the battery, which they had nothing (you hear that lawyers? nothing!) to do with. Nothing like shifting the blame. Even if it's true that it's the battery's fault, this is bad publicity for Nokia, and they should have responded with sympathy and said they would do whatever possible to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. Then, they could blame the battery company. Still, on my first reading of this story, it sounded too crazy to be true. It reads like an urban legend - and, it might be an exaggerated claim. It would be nice to see more information about what actually happened.
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  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 22 Aug 2003 @ 9:38am

    Bad Publicity

    I throughly agree ... Its bad publicity for Nokia and regardless of weather or not they are responsible, in the best interest of human kindness, not to mention corporate image, it would have been best for them to issue a statement that sympathises with the user.
    On a side note, cheesy batteries DO heat up and I could see this as actually being a real story. I used to buy the " cheapo " batteries for my phones and noticed that with long talk times my phones could actually get hot enough to be uncomfortable to hold.
    And technically, the manufactures of the phones do tell you not to use batteries not manufactured by them so its hard to expect them to support them.
    Oh well ... she will probably get 2 million+ dollars like to idiot that dropped hot coffee on herself @ McDonald's ...

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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