There have been some bizarre cell phone accidents in the news of late:* In January 2004, a Malaysian man who napped on his bed while his cell recharged beside him was reportedly scalded across his buttocks by the remnants of the phone's battery as the unit exploded. The 40-year-old electrician had put a new battery into his cell the week before.
* In February 2004, Asia Pulse reported that the SV-130 phone belonging to a 54-year-old South Korean woman exploded, setting her bed on fire. According to their account, the cell was not being used at the time, and its battery was disconnected. Fortunately, the woman was sleeping in another room at the time her phone went ka-bang.
* In March 2004, a welder in Thailand was said to have suffered a severe electric shock when his cell phone exploded from having been brought into too close proximity to a high-voltage pole. The victim's injuries were severe enough to necessitate his leg's being amputated.
* In September 2004, a report out of southern Vietnam stated that a two-year-old Siemens C45 left charging for 30 minutes had exploded, slightly injuring a bystander.
Worldwide, a number of cells exploded in 2003, a great many of them Nokia phones. According to Nokia, third-party or counterfeit batteries were to blame: in each and every exploding phone case it investigated, the battery in question proved not to be original to the unit and not to have included industry-standard safety measures. It also found the vast majority of short circuits that led to these explosions were caused by the units' having undergone traumatic events (such as being dropped) which jeopardized the integrity of poorly-manufactured batteries.
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