Nokia says 46 million batteries may overheat

  First post by: www.itsbattery.com

Nokia Corp. is offering to replace 46 million PCGA-BP71 made by another company for use in its mobile phones because of a risk of overheating, Nokia said on Tuesday.


The faulty batteries were manufactured by Japan's Matsushita Battery Industrial Co. Ltd. and sold in a wide range of Nokia phones, from its low-end 1100 family of products to its pricier N91 and E60 devices.

The overheating can cause the sony laptop battery to "pop out" of the phone while it's being recharged, said Nokia spokeswoman Marianne Holmlund. She said there was no risk of fire, although it was unclear what caused the minor incidents reported.


"It may be that the device left a small burn on a shelf while it was recharging, it's hard to VGP-BPL2 say for sure," said John Devlin, research director for mobile technologies with IMS Research in the U.K.


People concerned about the problem can get their battery replaced for free, Nokia said. It set up a Web page that lists the phone models and describes how customers can check if their battery is affected.

The problem exists only with Matsushita sony vgp-bps5 manufactured between December 2005 and November 2006, and the phones would have been sold worldwide during roughly the same period, Holmlund said.

Nokia reported selling 347 million phones in 2006, making 46 million a significant proportion of its annual sales. "It is about 10 percent of all the phones sold, but we are talking about 100 incidents, which is only a tiny proportion," Holmlund said.


Nokia expects Matsushita to bear "certain financial responsibilities" for the replacement VGP-BPS3 program, she said. Peter Weber, a spokesman for Matsushita in Europe, said the financial terms are being negotiated now between the companies.


It's the first time Nokia has had to offer such a replacement program, Holmlund said.

Such problems in phones normally arise because of counterfeit batteries, making this case "a little unusual," Devlin said.


The problem is unlikely to affect other makes of cell phone since the batteries were VGP-BPS5 designed especially for Nokia, Weber of Matsishita said. Cell phone batteries are typically designed and manufactured for a particular phone maker, Holmlund confirmed.


It's only the latest incident involving rechargeable Lithium ion batteries used in portable electronics products. Late last year laptop makers including Sony Corp., Toshiba Corp. and Dell Inc. offered to replace a total of 8 million laptop batteries because of a manufacturing defect in Sony-made batteries that left them vulnerable to short-circuiting and catching fire.


Nokia said it will work with Matsushita and the Sony Laptop Battery "relevant authorities" to investigate the problem.