Product Advisory: Nokia BL-5C battery

Your battery is not among those manufactured by Matsushita between December 2005 and November 2006 and your battery will not be replaced.

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You would think they would have worded it a little nicer

It's OK. I've got a fake one!

In my office we have Dells, Thinkpads, Sonys, Nokia BL5Cs, and never, ever have I had one that's come up as bad on the serial number checks systems.

I want to see one go boom...

Actually I've tried to distribute as many hazardous items in the general direction of the bean counters just on the off chance.

The BOFH would never have this problem.

"Actually I've tried to distribute as many hazardous items in the general direction of the bean counters just on the off chance."

Just leave the "battery testing device" (aka a piece of wire between + and -) in place when handing over the laptop. Be prepared to run...

The cheeky bastards. Better something like, "Your battery is not among those manufactured by Matsushita between December 2005 and November 2006 and therefore you are not at risk of having your face or house burned to a crisp. By the way we're very sorry for risking your safety and having you open up your phone to fart around with tiny little serial numbers. We did consider using Club Nokia to inform you of all this palava, but felt that this would confuse users, who are used to Club Nokia providing absolutely nothing of any use. Please continue to read The Register for any further quietly mumbled, begrudging announcements about your safety. Cheers and that. xxx Nokia"

Most people keep their phone in their pocket!

The problem only occurs when the phone is recharging it seems, so your pockets are safe (Unless you generally leave your battery in your pocket while it's recharging).

I have one of the Nokia batteries of death in my N70, which I have confirmed on their web site.

It does not just overheat when charging. It gets unpleasantly hot during phone calls too; so much so that one needs to use the speakerphone feature for calls of more than 30 seconds.

Who do I speak to now about the eye damage that resulted from trying to read the minuscule font size used for the battery serial number?

Ever since a duff exploding battery incident about 4 years ago, I have taken to buying (at my own expense) the GP (Gold Peak) equivalents of the "official" batteries of Japanese the manufacturers.

They (the GP ones) are far cheaper, works just as well or better (they have larger capacity ones that the "official" manufacturers don't produce) and they have NEVER been known to over heat, catch fire or explode. So much for the highly praised Japanese quality control procedures when a tiny, little Singaporean company, manufacturing in China, can show them how it is done properly !!

Having said that, it could be that these batteries were shipped by mistake to the general public, since they could have been ordered by the Ninjas as disguised hand-grenades !!

...and have you ever spoken with a Fin. They just just get to point ;)

It blew a raspberry at my battery. Shame, thought I was going to get a free spare for a while :)

..then enter the info in the website more than once. You can bet it's an automatic system, and they probably aint thought of that...

"Death heatray phone

It does not just overheat when charging. It gets unpleasantly hot during phone calls too; so much so that one needs to use the speakerphone feature for calls of more than 30 seconds."

I think you'll find that's the radiation from the phone cooking your face.

"Ever since a duff exploding battery incident about 4 years ago, I have taken to buying (at my own expense) the GP (Gold Peak) equivalents of the "official" batteries of Japanese the manufacturers."

So where do you get these from?

I used the Nokia battery recall check web page http://www.nokia.com/batteryreplacement/en/ and typed in my 26 digit serial number and luckily all was ok. I doubled checked the digits and they seemed to be correct but if I type a random 26 digit code in or change for example a "0" (zero) to an "O" (letter O) or a "1" (number 1) to a "l" (letter L) it still says all is ok. Surely this could mean people with faulty batteries could miss type their number and it would say all is ok. Shouldn't a check be performed on the 26 digit number to ensure the correct format or customers could have potentially defect batteries and not know it!!!

because it's easier and faster to search for a known pattern in the number or search a database of known bad numbers than to search a database of ALL the numbers. My phone had 1LI1 in it... and I could discern it all cause the ! has the little left cap on it while the I has no cap and the L is a normal L. as for O vs. 0 (zero) ... I always assume zero first when the sequenced referenced is a serial "number".

for those who question their reading abilities for the smaller than small numbers... a handy dandy reading glass can be yours for the low, low price of $xx. simply go to your local market and pick up your own magnifying glass. or better yet, borrow one from a friend. this will not however solve the problem with o vs. 0 though.

of course you could always go to your local wireless dealer and have one of them get the eye strain reading that number.