Never use the cell phone while it is hooked to the electrical outlet! If you are charging the cell phone and a call comes in, unplug it from the charger and outlet!
That’s what an e-mail warned me today. I am forever confused by some of the e-mails that circulate warning us of various and sundry disasters.
I’ve passed some of them along on the outside chance they might be true – i. e. leaving the cell phone charging in a parked car. The sender claims his garage burned down. I’m not so sure.
Now I feel like I’ve escaped the arms of death for all the times I’ve talked on my cell phone while it was on the charger. The latest alarmist e-mail shows a burned up bed and disfigured fingers of someone whose phone exploded while talking and charging.
The e-mail in question was issued on the letterhead of a Miami hospital and it is prefaced with the notation it had been verified on Snopes.com – a pretty reliable source. I went to check it out and found no such mention.
If anyone knows the answer to this question, I would appreciate hearing it. In the meantime, I’ll avoid answering the phone while it is on the charger, just in case.
Wikipedia says it is true – – IF lightning hits the cell phone or the power line to the charger supply outlet while you are talking.
Hmmm. Braddock warns me repeatedly to delete these warnings, since 99.9 percent are bogus. But you never know…
When I got this particular email, I went to snopes which stated that talking on a cell phone while recharging was not the serious danger warning about so that part is FALSE. But if cell phone batteries explode, you can be burned like that, so snopes.com stated that that particular email was partially true and partially false. I’ve found that you have to check for yourself even if the email says snopes said it was true. Snopes had this exact email even with the same picture. It DID state that the only incident they knew of this ever happening happened in India in 2004 and they concluded that it was probably caused by a defect since they could find no other instances.
Thanks Elsie. Wonder what would make batteries explode?
Hi Em,
I have been warned to only use the charger in the car when the motor is running.
Think it was someone in the phone store (?)who’d had actual bad experience with leaving one charging while the car motor was off, but it was only mechanical damage, not any injury to his person.
Can’t remember the specific damage, but either way, it wouldn’t be cheap to remedy.
Cuz
I don’t know about cars in your part of the world Nance, but in Australia accessories like the charger outlet (eg. cigarette lighter) are inoperative unless the car’s ignition is on and/or the motor is running.
So if you go shopping of whatever and leave your charger plugged in, absolutely nothing will happen. It’s akin to turning your TV on at home, but turning the power switch off at the wall.
When buying Cellphone Batteries make sure that you are not getting those chinese fakes and knockoffs..*’
This subject was quite informative and nicely written. I prepare to try and do some far more research on this. Thank you for discussing this timely details. We need to have more this way.