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Saturday, Jul 07, 2007
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Worker dies after mobile explodes

Anand Parthasarathy

Bangalore: The Chinese media says a worker in an iron ore plant died after the mobile phone that he was carrying in his breast pocket, exploded, shattering his ribcage and sending a fragment into his heart. The incident which occurred on June 19 has only now been reported by the English language Shanghai Daily and other local newspapers.

Xiao Jinpeng (22) years was a welder — and there is speculation that the high ambient temperature in his work spot might have played a part in the tragedy.

News flood net

Reports flooding Internet sites on Friday have generally jumped to conclude that the phone’s battery might have exploded — hardly surprising after a series of incidents last year where big brand laptop computers burst into flames spontaneously.

Mobile phones use the same type of batteries, carried by portable computers — Lithium ion, where carbon forms one electrode, and a metal oxide, the other — however the power requirements are much smaller.

While major laptop makers have recalled the defective batteries in batches (most of them made to a process perfected by Sony), they have been less proactive in coming up with a safe alternative.

Smaller lithium ion batteries — the kind used by the world’s 2 billion cell phone owners were thought to be immune to exploding danger — till now.

The killer phone is said to be a Motorola make, though knowledgeable sources say that in itself might not be very significant: There is a huge business in counterfeit phones as well as batteries in booming mobile phone markets such as China. The news will be of special concern in India which is seeing one of the world’s fastest growth rates in mobile phone usage: According to its annual survey of the Indian telecom industry, CyberMedia’s “Voice and Data” magazine, said on Thursday, that cellular phone usage zoomed by 73 % in 2006-07, to cross 157 million subscribers and generated a 56% growth in revenues for the providers, to generate $ 12.5 billion.

There is now one phone (mobile or handset) for every five Indians.

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