Nokia Battery Problem ( BL - 5C )

[Elisa]

Cellular phone giant Nokia recently announced a major problem with BL-5C batteries. Can anyone here explain ( of course, with technical details ) what went wrong with the batteries?

[ash]

Oh yes, I had one battery that has that model name for my old phone. But It got busted way before the recall. Basically it bloated up.. which I believe resulted in some leakage.

Im thinking that happens to all lithium based batteries. They can be really hard to keep stable compared to NiCad batteries. I did some research on it once for a competition a while ago, but I forgot

[The_Big_K]

Very interesting topic, Elisa ! Actually I had this question in my mind but never cared to post it here .

Ash, are you sure that all lithium based batteries have this problem? I don't know much about the battery stuff, but it would be great if someone could enlighten us about it!

Looking forward to more replies.

-The Big K-

[ash]

Ah, I think the unstablity is for the Lithium-ion based batteries, not Lithium based in general, sorry But Li-Ion is mostly used in laptops, mobiles and any devices that would draw high current at any time. I read that they are dangerous if safety features are not implemented. If the positive and negative terminals are shorted with some accumlation of microscopic metal particles (that may have come during the manufacturing processes), there might result a sudden explosion, or "thermal runaway". There are alot of other factors too like thermal unstablity above a certain temperature.. Anyway, Im not too familiar with the technical details

If you are wondering WHY we have this technology if its dangerous in the first place, its because Lithium-Ion based cells provide many advantages over previous technologies, like it can recharged a number of times, has a high energy density and is environmentally safe (good for disposing). I suppose manufaturers do try to find ways to make it safer.. but theres a limit on how well they can do this, plus they still have to consider the cost factor too.

Here's a site with a lot of useful info:

Lithium-ion safety concerns
http://batteryuniversity.com/partone-5B.htm

[The_Big_K]

How about contacting a Nokia Engineer & ask him to tell us what went wrong?

Can anyone help us with this? If yes, shoot a mail to me

-The Big K-

[The_Big_K]

Mr. Beychok, could you please throw some light on it? What went wrong with the batteries?

-The Big K-

[mbeychok]

The Big K:

Sorry, I don't know anything about the Nokia battery problem. It is way out of my field of expertise. Has anyone tried a Google search? I did a quick search on the phrase "Nokia battery problem" and got 150 hits.