#“The very real danger of cheap Lithium Polymer (LiPo) batteries and accessories”
We’ve all heard the horror stories of phones exploding in people’s faces and it turned out to be due to aftermarket cheap LiPo batteries. TBH I’ve always pooh-poohed that stuff and figured they had been doing something stupid with their phones.
I was wrong.
When my wife moved from iPhone 4 to iPhone 5 recently, she discovered [a] the iPhone 5 battery life is awful and [b] of course her Mophie battery pack case wouldn’t work due to the new connector. As a marathon runner, she needs the phone to be still working after 26 miles of music, GPS and Runkeeper. The iPhone 5 isn’t up to the job.
The original Mophie cost 70+ in Dixons and is still working well on the older phone. My ideas around hacking out the iPhone 4 connector and replacing it with a Lightning one were just plain stupid. So I went cheapskate and got her a $23 Mophie knock-off on DX.com. I guessed the 2200mAh would turn out to be fantasy but even if it gave her an extra hour or two running, it would be worth it.
We were really surprised to discover that it actually worked well and hugely extended the usability of the iPhone 5. It just about fit into an oversized running arm-band too.
That was until Friday.
That afternoon, the battery case was on her computer desk, charging. Our 11yo son was using the computer. Then the case started smoking. He went down to my home office to tell me but I was on a call and he decided not to bother me! So he calmly went back and pulled the cable out of the charger. He then went and got a glass of water, in case it went on fire. He’s some kid. Zero panic. OK, we had to explain about water and different types of fires to him afterwards but overall, incredibly impressive.
Less impressive was the melted plastic of the case and USB cable. Less impressive again was the state of the LiPo battery inside the case when I cracked it open. It was buckled and distorted. Yes I’m an idiot for doing so, it could have blown up in my face.
Whilst it’s during charging that LiPo batteries seem to be at their most dangerous, who’s to say that it wouldn’t have gone on fire or exploded when my wife had been running?
What would have happened if my son hadn’t been there on Friday?
I don’t want to turn into my parents' generation where many of them unplug the TV, toaster, oven and microwave every night but it really does make me think about the huge number of devices in our house that sit charging most of the time: laptops, phones, MP3 players, Bluetooth headsets, Nintendo DSes etc etc.
At the very least, I am never doing unattended charging of any non-mainstream-brand that has a LiPo inside from now on. There’s a reason a Mophie costs 70+ and it’s not all about margin. There is a brand new one winging its way from Amazon as we speak.