back to article Exploding mobile battery kills Chinese welder

Motorola and Chinese authorities are working together to discover just how an exploding mobile phone battery claimed the life of a welder at Yingpan Iron Ore Dressing Plant in Gansu's Jinta county. According to state news agency Xinhua, Xiao Jinpeng died on 19 June after "a Motorola cell phone in [his] chest pocket suddenly …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    was it...

    an iPlode.

    sorry.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ...or was it...

    a Motorola KLLR?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Terror alert

    Government sources warn of an immense terrorist plot now underway intending to destroy the entire fabric of our civilisation.

    Apparently, millions of people throughout the world are, right now, in possession of explosive devices that can kill without any warning.

    Sorces state that Al-Qaeda is undoubtedly responsible, with the explosive devices themselves being designed in Scandinavia and Japan.

    Police would like to speak to anyone connected to Ericcson, Sony, Motorola, Samsung, Nokia, LG or any other mobile company.

    Oh, if you call them, please use the 999 landline.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This has happened before...

    ... Mossad having used this trick on Hamas. The welder didn't sound like a palestinian militant though.

  5. alan lovedog

    fancy phones

    i've been saying for a long time that the vibrate function on phones was getting too strong.

  6. Dam

    Motorola: we make your heart go boom, honest

    They could almost claim they're on the bleeding edge of technology.

    Look at things from the bright side, the bloke was lucky this happened in a free country.

    Had it happened in the US, his family would be locked up (in azkaban, no less), and anyone suspected to have had a remote connection with him would be questioned under terror charges.

  7. Dillon Pyron

    Welder?

    Lots of different types of welding. Oxy-acetylene, stick, TIG, MIG. There there's the exotic stuff. Lots of ways to die. TIG and MIG use lots of high frequency electricity and might have caused something.

    The shop where I weld on my race car has a warning not to have cell phones, pagers, cigarette lighters and other things in your pockets when welding or near welders. Of course they also have a zero tolerance policy on eye protection. Hasn't been an accident there since they opened in 1990.

  8. heystoopid

    Oh no

    Oh no , the dreaded SONY cell phone battery has struck yet again!

  9. Jags

    height of blindness...

    "Look at things from the bright side, the bloke was lucky this happened in a free country."

    China, a free country???

    is this the height of blindness WITH eyes or deafness of a brain.

  10. This post has been deleted by its author

  11. Jason Togneri

    Re: Terror Alert

    "Sorces state that Al-Qaeda is undoubtedly responsible, with the explosive devices themselves being designed in Scandinavia and Japan."

    Since when has Motorola been Scandinavian or Japanese?

    Incidentally, Nokia and Ericsson are both Scandinavian but are from different countries. Scandinavia isn't a country any more than Europe, or Africa.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nokia

    By Jason Togneri Posted Thursday 5th July 2007 06:47 GMT

    " "Sorces state that Al-Qaeda is undoubtedly responsible, with the explosive devices themselves being designed in Scandinavia and Japan."

    Since when has Motorola been Scandinavian or Japanese?

    Incidentally, Nokia and Ericsson are both Scandinavian but are from different countries. Scandinavia isn't a country any more than Europe, or Africa."

    = = = =

    <pedant>

    Actually, Nokia is Finnish. Finland is NOT a Scandinavian country.

    </pedant>

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What are you?.

    ....the geography police?

    It was just a humorous quip.

    Cor I bet you're a load of fun at parties.

  14. Alan Donaly

    Boom boom boom!

    I am sitting here in the center of the US they

    were celebrating July 4th and some joker was

    occaisionally detonating quarter sticks of

    dynamite down my street and no one said a

    thing (me either) though it shook the house

    and it occurs to me that people here seem

    to have access to all sorts of explosives and that

    terrorists are a bunch of idiots all they need are

    a bunch of motorola phones.

  15. Chris Goodchild

    Funny ?

    I'm amazed that not one of the comments posted so far have expressed any sorrow for the fact that someone has died and mostly are jokes, this welder was almost certainly a member of a family who are now greiving over the loss of one of their family and a breadwinner. The other thing I would like to say is,welding, if it is one of the forms of arc welding ( mig, tig,stick etc) then there is a large transformer involved that produces a strong electro-magnetic induction field. Does any one out there know how that may or may not interact with cell phone battries?

    Last thing, one of the reasons I subscribe to the reg is for the excellent humour in both the reporting and the comments but I guess where death is concerned my sense of humour is non too good.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cell phone batteries

    have roughly the power stored in them that equals to their weight in classical dynamite. That might be small but placed in a chest pocket it has the same explosive capability as a pack of smal firecrackers. (both can be lethal)

    To blow up a phone battery, all you need is some way to short it, which can be done by conducting metallic dust or high frequency emp waves, both can be present in a welding environment.

  17. Dam

    Re: Funny?

    Original:

    Last thing, one of the reasons I subscribe to the reg is for the excellent humour in both the reporting and the comments but I guess where death is concerned my sense of humour is non too good.

    Reply:

    Yeah, looks like your sense of humour is failing here.

    Do you mourn the daily loss of children that die of starvation in Africa? I don't, however sad that is, I'd spend my life on it otherwise.

    People live and die every day, accidents happen every day, and 5yo kids see one of their parents die every day.

    There's way enough pain and sadness in the world already, for us not to concern ourselves with the random death of a random person.

    Relatives and family bring us enough trouble already, I think I'll stick to them for now.

    PS: Life is a sexually transmissible disease.

  18. Matt W

    I call Hoax

    This looks suspiciously like this old chestnut.

    http://www.snopes.com/horrors/techno/lighters.asp

  19. Bruce Sinton

    Funny

    I am with Mr. Goodchild on this. If this had been an English or American citizen that had been killed , it would have been expressions of grief and outrage at the manufacturer of this phone, and not smartarse comments

    from shitheads.

    Bruce

  20. Jason Togneri

    Re: Nokia

    My line: Incidentally, Nokia and Ericsson are both Scandinavian but are from different countries. Scandinavia isn't a country any more than Europe, or Africa.

    ---

    Your line: <pedant> Actually, Nokia is Finnish. Finland is NOT a Scandinavian country. </pedant>

    ---

    As a matter of fact, I live in Helsinki (I'm sitting in my office here in Herttoniemi as I type), and I am fully aware that Finland is Fenno-Scandinavian, rather than fully Scandinavian, not being related to the mountain range on the Scandinavian penninsula, of the same name. Perhaps I should have corrected the poster to correctly identify Scandinavia plus Finland as 'Nordic'. However, I thought that most people here wouldn't be so utterly anal-retentive as to be bothered by that minor and frankly rather boring detail, given that it utterly misses the point. I guess I was wrong.

  21. Michael Corkery

    Dillon

    how does the welding affect th ebattery? Is it heat (sparks and that) or just risk of it coming into contact with welding flame?

    ta

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: Re: Funny

    Cell phone batteries exploding with enough force to kill someone is funny. There is just no getting around the fact that with all the fantastically exotic ways available for humans to die that a little cell phone can do the trick. Ha. Ha. Ha. Jackasses.

    Will they now be required to list DEATH as a possible risk in the owners manual? If this was a counterfeit Motorola phone it certainly backs up the claims that cheap outsourcing is a really bad idea.

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