It was inevitable, Lithium batteries occasionally explode, so sticking one in your ear probably isn't the greatest idea ever.
Wow, MIND-BLOWING: Florida Man gets an earful from 'exploding Apple AirPod' bud
A Florida man claims one of his Apple AirPods blew up as he worked out at the gym. Jason Colon, of Tampa, said on Thursday he noticed white smoke coming out of the painfully trendy headphone bud, set the gizmo down on his workout machine, and went off to get an LA Fitness staffer for help. When he came back, Colon says, one of …
COMMENTS
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Saturday 10th February 2018 01:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
The good thing is the battery (apparently) is external to the ear canal, but if the guy was asleep (for example) it could have been nasty.
But not as nasty as when e cigarettes explode. Those are a major safety hazard, and should be banned.
Really no small lithium-ion device should be close to our face. Phones at least are designed to protect the batteries, and are large enough to do a fairly good job. Plastic (or thin metal) gadgets don’t maintain enough rigidity to be safe...
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Sunday 11th February 2018 09:22 GMT pffut
> But not as nasty as when e cigarettes explode. Those are a major safety hazard, and should be banned.
'Course, trying your very best to effectively short circuit the battery in the hunt for more POWAHHH (bigger vapes), I can't say I'm overly sympathetic when you come sobbing with a 'my e-cig blew up' story...
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Monday 12th February 2018 11:42 GMT phuzz
"But not as nasty as when e cigarettes explode. Those are a major safety hazard, and should be banned."
The really shitty devices and batteries that cause these explosions are already banned because they violate safety standards. The ones made by legit manufacturers that actually get their products certified are fine.
Most of the time when you see a story about the battery in something exploding/catching on fire, it because it was a cheap knock-off. Basically you get what you pay for.
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Monday 12th February 2018 12:32 GMT Tom 38
Most of the time when you see a story about the battery in something exploding/catching on fire, it because it was a cheap knock-off. Basically you get what you pay for.
Most of the time it's someone carrying a loose battery in their pockets, it shorts on their keys or coins etc and they lose a bunch of skin.
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Saturday 10th February 2018 20:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: He inserted it the wrong way
Maybe not insert it the wrong way, but if you do something that damages it (like fall asleep while wearing them and roll over onto your side - putting pressure on it) that could eventually make a failure more likely. Or maybe crack the case so that water can get inside and short the battery - like say if you were working out and starting to sweat.
Perhaps we might start hearing about more of these over time as Airpods age and are exposed to more and more cumulative damage.
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Monday 12th February 2018 16:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
I thought it was vanity
I can assure you that in my case, and many of my fellow users, vanity is not bolstered by a straight look at ones own body - although it may well be a motivator to remind me what I am attempting to overcome :-) . On the other hand, there are a couple of rather gorgeous looking women using the gym - and that might be considered a motivator when combined with a view of my own carcass
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Saturday 10th February 2018 06:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Did Apple think this through?
Hey, this is Crapple we are talking about.
As they have been selling these stupid things for a year and there hasn't been a Note 7 type wave of failures like this I think this might have been a one off but who can resist a chance to slag off the Cupertino 'tat seller' eh?
At least two things are certain to happen
1) A lawsuit gets filed
2) At least a dozen copycats will surface on the Internet ('Me Too' and all that)
I'll never put things like this into my ear. I did that as a young child (a pencil) and lost around 30% of the hearing in that ear. I didn't know better back then.
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Saturday 10th February 2018 10:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
Even a NiMh battery can decide to burn for no apparent reason.
One of the garden solar lights had stopped working. There was a neat circular hole in the plastic container where the small NiMh button cell had burned through and dropped to the ground. The button cell was 1.2v with about 80mah capacity.
A replacement battery has worked without any problem.
I made a Valentine's day decoration for the school dance this week with an Arduino Nano controlling some LEDs. I used 2xAA alkaline batteries rather than rechargeables - to be as safe as possible.
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Saturday 10th February 2018 11:32 GMT Stoneshop
Even a NiMh battery can decide to burn for no apparent reason.
Well, given the extreme simplicity of the charging circuit (nothing more than a diode) as it is present in the IC (QX5252) that's in all these garden lights, there's a good chance that the battery can get overcharged on a sunny day. Especially a small 80mAh battery; they also come with a standard AA or AAA cell, which have some ten or more times that capacity and therefore won't overcharge quite so easily. Repeatedly overcharging is one thing what kills NiMh's
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Saturday 10th February 2018 11:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
This...
Is why I insist on using cable and headphones.
Oh, not literally specifically *this*. But you know when you get that "older person/old fashioned" feeling? Sticking to Tape/CD instead of MP3, using a dumbphone/turning off wifi/GPS. Those things other people look at you strangely for... but you know, deep down, there is a real good reason to do it?!
I just prefer not to stick batteries in my ears.
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Saturday 10th February 2018 19:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: This...
I don't know, I don't use bluetooth headsets because the batteries.
It's rather like asking me if the break pads on a Veyron last many miles... I'm kinda not going to know for *other* reasons than not wanting the break pad replacement costs. ;)
However, I am of the opinion, most music reproduction is "good enough", and I've nothing against it being so. However I do also think having a nicer quality is ok... providing it's physically demonstrable to not be snake oil!
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Sunday 11th February 2018 08:38 GMT fajensen
Re: This...
I don't know, I don't use bluetooth headsets because the batteries.
I had a "Marshall Monitor BT" headset for Christmas to keep the gibberings of the mind eaters prowling my open-office hell-space.
The battery life on this particular headset is obscene - about 30 hours of continous use which in my case is about one month of actual use. I have so far charged them exactly once.
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Sunday 11th February 2018 12:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Nice BT headphones.
Oh, they would be great. One charge in 30 hours, and so far only needed to charge them once? That's still one more time than I've charged my cabled set... ;)
But I would actually be after some, if not for the extra hassle of remembering to charge, or replacing (as some cannot be :( ) the batteries in so many years time.
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Saturday 10th February 2018 12:32 GMT Davegoody
I had a (Generic) Lithium-Battery based USB PowerBank charging in my car a few weeks ago.. It went up in flames, taking my car with it. Nobody was hurt (fortunately), but it wrote-off my car, leaving me with a large gap between settlement and owing..... Could have taken me and the family with it, so grateful for small mercies....
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Saturday 10th February 2018 19:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
Sorry to about your loss.
But there should be warnings for doing such devices. Most battery banks are probably not safe from what I have seen. Add to that most car 5v chargers not being safe. Add to that both probably also not having the quality of voltage regulation. You then get a match made in... sorry to hear about your loss.
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Sunday 11th February 2018 09:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
My views may not be popular but...
In days gone by, before potentially dangerous things inside "black boxes", such as batteries, the risks inside peoples homes and on their person seemed either obvious to most (bleach has don't drink on the bottle, medicines must be locked away from children etc) or were relatively few, or the risks had been present for many many years. (Think before modern tech).
The risks in the modern age are multiplying rapidly and most of these risks are within an area of people's life that is a "black box" to them. They know absolutely nothing about what's inside. With toys, minus the high tech side, we make sure the box says "not suitable for children under certain age", "contains parts that can cause choking", pens have lids on with holes inside, cots, bed matrices and furniture has fire proof material etc etc. Great lengths have been gone to to help protect people.
Technology though seems to evade most of these warnings and companies can produce very poor products, or, as in the case of lithium batteries, be placed in inappropriate places. Babies and toddlers seem to regularly swallow button cell batteries etc. Shoddy tumble driers burning homes etc.
I think it is high time more effort and thought is placed upon these technologies, either in the way of educating to a far more technical level or with far stricter rules because I feel that profit is the only motivation with these products.
The general population can not way up the pros and cons of this tech and legislation seems to be failing.
The other day doctors and 111 service wanted to send an ambulance out for me because of a very very very tiny risk that I may have internal bleeding that was life threatening, and yet no one is concerned that my phones, tumble drier, USB battery packs etc etc may cause death and fire risks to my whole family. These other risks are far higher than my taking of an ibuprofen once per day for 2 weeks to avoid arthritis.
It appears technology is exempt from health and safety, while we go totally risk averse in another areas.
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Sunday 11th February 2018 19:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: My views may not be popular but...
I don't think it's got any worse. My dad has stories about carrying the accumulators to the garage to get them charged. Would you let a child walk, or take a bus, carrying open jars of sulphuric acid these days? No to mention non-earthed mains valve radios with live chassis, etc.
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Monday 12th February 2018 00:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: My views may not be popular but...
"No to mention non-earthed mains valve radios with live chassis, etc."
IIRC early electric washing machines were a tub with an exposed mains voltage open coil motor underneath it.
BBC TV has a series, often repeated, about the dangers in the home during the usual era splits eg Victorian, Edwardian, 1930s.
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Sunday 11th February 2018 12:17 GMT JeffyPoooh
Bending lithium cells...
My Surface RT 2 needed a new battery pack. After several days spent removing screws needing a T3 bit (of size 46 thousandth of an inch), I finally met the glued-in battery. Predicting the future, I soldered some resistors directly across the cells to drain them fully, while the replacement pack slowly crossed the Pacific. About 8 weeks of relentless discharge gently flattened them to mV.
Removing the pack started by attempting to peel the cells out, but far too much bending was needed. So I ending up slicing the cells open (prismatic cells in baggies) to remove them without inflicting so much stress on them. It went smoothly. All back together and 100% working. Only five parts left over, ;-).
The experience was a combination of 'watch repair' and 'defusing a bomb'.
Thank you El Reg for ensuring that I was well aware of the dangers inherent in lithium cells.
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Sunday 11th February 2018 12:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Bending lithium cells...
Don't people use heat guns to remove the glue?
Had to do a replacement for a cheeper WinTab. Though I did bend the board a couple of cells were on, which needed me to bridge the traces after. As the cells were separate, but when I took them out separately, I found out they were not cabled in, but on a single long thin pcb. :(
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Sunday 11th February 2018 14:50 GMT JeffyPoooh
Re: Bending lithium cells...
AC inquired about heatguns.
Individual cells are big 100mm by 100mm. Plastic tablet case back, with dubious heat transfer characteristics. Ultrasticky double sided tape was across middle, not really accessible. Cells marked with warnings about excess heat.
All things considered, heating didn't seem to be the optimal approach. Sharp knife to carefully open baggies worked a treat.
YMMV.
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Sunday 11th February 2018 20:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Bending lithium cells...
I'll still not recommend it. As while you could confirm you discharged the cells, most people cannot.
Breaking the cell is IMO much much worse than a little heat and some elbow grease. A little heat should be fine. Always check out iFixit: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Microsoft+Surface+Pro+3+Battery+Replacement/51877
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Sunday 11th February 2018 23:30 GMT PhilipN
Sweat-proof?
Nope. There are such things available e.g. Jabra for gym junkies but Airpods ain't one of them.
Some e.g.Bragi even say you can swim with 'em in but [ditto].
I shall be happy to keep any form of electricity well away from any form of water (and sweat), thank you.
Not sure why nobody has yet mentioned a (very) short circuit as the cause of the problem.
Must be techies never ever break into a sweat.
And could a non-techie learn whether he correctly identifies sweat as a good conductor?
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Monday 12th February 2018 12:43 GMT Tom 38
Re: Sweat-proof?
My Sony walkman from 3-4 years ago was fully waterproof earbuds - fully sealed units that charge via induction.
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