Woman Suffers Facial Burns from Cell Phone

A 33 year old Dutch woman has suffered burns to her face after her cell phone burst into flames during use. It appears that the handset, a Nokia model had just been dropped on the floor and powered down. The woman switched it back on and went to make a call when it suddenly ignited.

On local television last night, a Nokia spokesperson said that the fire had been caused by damage to the battery, but that the battery was an inferior third party supplied model and not supplied by Nokia.

Commenting on the incident, police spokesman Eric Vermeulen said "She was treated on site by health workers for facial burns,"

"I'm not a technical expert, but we assume it caught fire due to a short circuit."

Earlier this year, Nokia reported that over the past months, cases have been reported of non-original mobile phone batteries overheating in the European, African and Asian regions, causing damage to both batteries and Nokia phones. Nokia is currently conducting a thorough investigation of various non-original batteries manufactured by different entities and obtained in a number of regions. Based on the investigation conducted on the non-original batteries that Nokia has been able to obtain, the batteries appear to not fulfill the safety and quality requirements Nokia applies to original Nokia batteries. It is also possible that using non-original mobile phone chargers increase the risk of battery malfunction."

Posted to the site on 22nd August 2003