Kyocera Resumes Phone Shipments, Says No Explosion Happened
from the hmmm... dept
Last week was the week of the "exploding mobile phone" as stories were coming out left and right about how one mobile phone after another was exploding. At the time, I found it interesting to compare the reactions of Kyocera and Nokia, the two headset makers whose phones were named in the stories. Kyocera stopped shipment of their phones and ordered a full investigation. Nokia just said that it must have been due to faulty batteries and it wasn't Nokia's problem at all. Well, the follow up to that story is that Kyocera has resumed shipments and said that "there was no explosion" in the first place. Instead, they say it was actually a safety feature, where the battery did overheat, but instead of exploding, expelled "harmless" graphite dust - which may have looked like an explosion. In some sense, this is (almost literally) the phone's way of letting off steam - and only happens in very rare instances. They say they're not concerned about the safety risks, and actually believe the battery performed as expected. While a blast of graphite dust certainly does sound better than exploding into flames, if there is a risk that my phone might suddenly spray out a blast of such dust, shouldn't that be explained to me at some point?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
What's the problem?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]