iPod Nano electrical discharge sparks new battery fear
Japanese player goes 'fzzzt'
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.
The Ministry said no one was injured. It's not immediately clear whether the iPod, its charger or the power supply was to blame. For its part, Apple is still investigating the incident.
In December 2007, an Atlanta airport worker Danny Williams claimed his iPod Nano burst into flames while he was carrying it in one of his trouser pockets. Precisely what caused the blaze is still not known - Apple is investigating that incident too.
When an LG laptop caught fire in Korea in January - a day after the alleged Nano spark-fest, interestingly - it was subsequently alleged by a Korean government researcher that it's impossible to guarantee the safety of any given lithium-ion battery, the technology used to power the Nano and the LG laptop.
The chances of a battery going boom are about a billion to one, the researcher said, but with so many such batteries in use around the world, one's bound to come a cropper sooner or later.
COMMENTS
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
@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).
@ Mad Hacker
Well, actually no, as the article was referring to Lithium Ion batteries around the world, not just in ipods.
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.
But they said ...
The chances of anything coming from Mars are a billion to one... but still amanfromMars came...
