iPod Nano electrical discharge sparks new battery fear

An original first-generation iPod Nano shot out sparks while being recharged in Japan back in January, the country's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry revealed today. The incident took place on 8 January, and was duly reported to Apple, which finally got round to letting the Ministry know about the matter on 7 March. …

[Neil Barnes]

The chances of a battery going boom are about a billion to one...

but everyone knows billion to one chances come up nine times out of ten.

Mine's the one with the asbestos pockets.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Neil

Well, everyone who mis-quotes Pratchett knows it anyway...

[Geoff Webber]

war of the worlds

Didnt HG Wells say something similar as well.

But the martians still came didn't they !

[TeeCee]

Are we sure?

So the chance of an iPod battery going up in flames is a thousand times* less than that of our being invaded by Martians**?

Wow! Best get that bet on with Ladbrokes then.

* US billion asumed

** "The chances of anything coming from Mars......."

[David Adams]

Is it.......

........ another cleverly disguised Taser??

The tin foil one in the corner please.

[Fiona]

@Neil Barnes

No, million to one chances crop up nine times out of ten, so surely billion to one chances must crop up even more often?

It's a billion to one chance, but it might just work...

[Mad Hacker]

Chances are actually 2 in 140 million

Well, actually since 140 million iPods have been sold, and two batteries have exploded, the chances are not 1 in 1 billion but 2 in 140 million or rather 1 in 70 million.

Flame icon, because when Apple sells another 70 million iPods another one will go up in flames.

[Paul]

But they said ...

The chances of anything coming from Mars are a billion to one... but still amanfromMars came...

[elder norm]

OK then, I would rather walk

Hmmm. Sounds pretty dangerous to me. :-)

Considering the loss of life from driving a car or flying in a plane, I guess this info makes them look down right super dangerous. Guess I had better start walking everywhere from now on.

Unless the chance of getting hit by lightening is more, then I had better stay home.

Unless the chance for getting hit by monster hail crashing thru your roof and killing you is more......... er....... H..e..l..p. rotflol.

en

[Mike]

amanfromMars

Nobody has verified that he is "here". Just that his IP address is in the 169.254.0.0/16 block, registered to the University of Mars.

Bandwidth is decent these days, but the latency sucks.

[Sam]

@ Mad Hacker

Well, actually no, as the article was referring to Lithium Ion batteries around the world, not just in ipods.

[Anonymous Coward]

@elder norm's diet

Just eat a normal sensible diet combined with regular exercise then there may initially be significant chances of lightening but after a few months things will stabilise and your chances of lightening will reduce immensely.

Of course, if you actually meant lightning, your chances of being struck by it are 562000/1 against so you're rather safer with an iPod (damnit I'm not an Apple Fanboi).

[David Kerry]

No explosions here...

My Nano recently decided that it's battery was far too small and decided to swell to about three times it's original size. Fortunately there were no sparks or explosions (I was in the car when it happened!) so all is well... sort of.

I originally thought it was down to a cheap in-car charger, though a dodgy batch of Nano batteries would certainly put that theory to rest.

There's some pictures of the battery here: http://speedyb.co.uk/comments.php?id=629