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Have Nokia? Will Explode!

In another case of battery makers ending up making faulty batteries, Nokia has announced that its BL-5C series of cellphone batteries made by Matushita during the period of December 2005 to November 2006 might turn out be defective. In short, your battery could overheat, and potentially create a health risk. Worst case scenario – it explodes. Your phone WILL suffer from poor performance though, in case you have a faulty battery. What’s more, BL-5C just happens to be Nokia’s most used battery series, so quite a few phones are at risk, even some from their Nseries range. Read a Yahoo! News article on Nokia’s battery problems here.

Following is the list of phones that use the faulty battery, and could potentially be affected. Nokia has said that they will replace any faulty battery for free, but hell this one’s gonna cost them a LOT.

Nokia 1100, Nokia 1100c, Nokia 1101, Nokia 1108, Nokia 1110, Nokia 1112, Nokia 1255, Nokia 1315, Nokia 1600, Nokia 2112, Nokia 2118, Nokia 2255, Nokia 2272, Nokia 2275, Nokia 2300, Nokia 2300c, Nokia 2310, Nokia 2355, Nokia 2600, Nokia 2610, Nokia 2610b, Nokia 2626, Nokia 3100, Nokia 3105, Nokia 3120, Nokia 3125, Nokia 6030, Nokia 6085, Nokia 6086, Nokia 6108, Nokia 6175i, Nokia 6178i, Nokia 6230, Nokia 6230i, Nokia 6270, Nokia 6600, Nokia 6620, Nokia 6630, Nokia 6631, Nokia 6670, Nokia 6680, Nokia 6681, Nokia 6682, Nokia 6820, Nokia 6822, Nokia 7610, Nokia N70, Nokia N71, Nokia N72, Nokia N91, Nokia E50, Nokia E60

The place to head to now in case you’ve got any of these phones is http://www.nokia.com/batteryreplacement/en where you will find information on how to check whether your phone is affected. Use the serial number lookup form to identify whether yours could be among the ones in trouble, and then take your phone to a Nokia Care Center. Basically, just take your phone cover off and on the battery its code will be written. On case you’re scared of even moving an inch of plastic without a geek around you, and you have the box in which your phone came in, look at its battery manual. That should tell you the series you have.

Boy, sort of a roll, isn’t it? Over the past few years, how come we’ve had so many cases of faulty battery complaints with so many companies? Are they trying to cut corners and maximise profits by churning out substandard stuff? Or say, implementing lesser quality control checks to save money? It’s a very major question, for say if your phone happens to explode right now or before a company detects a problem, you generally are legally not entitled to sue them, although in rare cases like these you might. Consumers must learn to be wary though – sure, using counterfeit batteries puts you in grave danger, but these days it seems that even ‘official, original and approved’ stuff could do the same.

3 replies on “Have Nokia? Will Explode!”

Yes, a phone exploding IS a highly unlikely scenario. But it is not improbable. Remember the Dell laptop which caught fire? Or for that matter, even fake Nokia batteries which are reported to catch fire? The root cause behind this is that fact that the barrier between the electrodes of the battery is thin; and in these faulty ones, there’s a defect because of which metal particles were introduced into the battery. These, over time, cross the barrier and create a conducting path between the electrodes, which results in a short circuit. Which can cause a fire.

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