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Second Nokia phone explodes

Staff CNETAsia

Published: 08 Oct 2003 09:55 BST

It sounded like a scene from Mission: Impossible gone wrong -- a Dutchman's cell phone exploded in his trouser pocket on Monday.

The supermarket employee could count himself lucky that he only suffered burns on his leg. In August, a woman got burns on her face when her mobile exploded.

Both incidents took place in the Netherlands, and involved Nokia phones.

The Finnish company had blamed the first exploding mobile incident on the fact that the woman did not use an original Nokia battery in her phone.

"In past cases in Europe of exploding phones, investigation showed that no original batteries were used," a Nokia spokesman of Nokia's Dutch unit told AFP.

However, according to Consumentenbond, a Dutch consumer association, the phone in this most recent explosion was a new one, with an original battery.

"Now they cannot say any longer that these are just incidents. This is the second time in a short period that a Nokia phone has exploded," Juliette Oolders, of the Dutch consumer watchdog, said.

There have been concerns that the microwave radiation used in mobile telephony could harm users, but these latest incidents show that the damage can be more dramatic.

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