Cell Phone Explosion Nothing New - Part That Exploded Is

The following is a guest post from Steve Wade, a member of Jeff Rasansky's client experience team.

Dallas Cell Phone Explosion A Little Odd

This is probably the oddest cell phone explosion story I’ve ever heard. Yesterday, 30 year old Aron Embry, of Cedar Hill, was leaving his home when the glass around his Android II earpiece speaker burst. He suffered severe lacerations, but thankfully it looks like there won’t be any long term damage.

Mobile phone explosions are nothing new. Exploding cell phone hysteria began back in 2004, with people in Malaysia, Thailand, and China being scalded or killed from exploding lithium mobile phone batteries. In the U.S., an incident where a 19 year old was burned when her cell phone detonated prompted CPSC to release tips for cell phone safety. The general theme is: protect your battery. Don’t mix incompatible chargers and batteries.

What makes the Cedar Hill incident stand out is that the battery didn’t explode. The battery is intact – the phone is still receiving calls. Some unknown defect near the speaker caused the explosion. Looking through the Droid forums, I find several complaints of broken internal earpiece speakers – but (thankfully) nothing about it causing explosions. Hopefully, Motorola’s investigation (which they promised Thursday night) will reveal this is an isolated incident. If not, they could quickly find themselves involved in a product liability lawsuit.

I’m really interested in learning more about this (apparent) speaker glass explosion. Anyone able to help me out?