Complaints: Cellphone Battery Designed To Fail At First Drop Of Water?

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dropthecell1.jpgDoes one of the LG cellphone batteries have a sensor on it to cause cellphone failure after the first touch of water? Even though no significant amount of water has penetrated the actual battery or cellphone itself. That's what Tim wonders after conducting a little experiment and paper hack following dropping his cell phone into a tiny bit of coffee.

dropthecell2.jpg

I recently dropped my cell phone into the last sip of coffee I had in my cup, so I know the liquid didn't penetrate to any meaningful hardware, especially considering I plucked it out immediately. Stickers, on both the inside of the battery casing (on the phone) and the battery itself, were pink/red when I opened the battery cover, however, very little moisture was present. 5 minutes later my phone turned itself off and I wasn't able to turn it back on until I plugged it into my charger at the end of the day. The phone blinked the 'Charge Complete' signal to me almost immediately, but when I unplugged it from the charger it immediately turned off again and I wasn't able to turn it on without it being plugged into the charger.

Here's where the super-sketchiness comes into play. I noticed that the pink sticker on the battery was covering an indented rectangular area, so I pulled off the sticker which revealed two small brass sensors. When I cut out and installed a plain piece of white paper to replace the color changed sticker, the phone miraculously began taking a charge again and when I unplugged it from the charger, it didn't turn off.

This seems like something that would create a lot of unnecessary consumer battery purchases and therefore sales for LG (the manufacturer of the phone and the battery) while at the same time serving to void warranties for few, if any, legitimate, consumer caused issues. These phone companies take advantage of water exposure by attributing future glitches to water damage whether water is the cause or not. It is also my opinion that they have gone so far as to implement 'water activated failure mechanisms' into phones and batteries in an effort to create replacement sales for products that aren't really damaged. As my example illustrates, the removal of the failure mechanism (the pink sticker on the battery) restored the phone and battery to its pre-coffee state . . . What a scam!

That's very interesting, can you supply photos of the paper and sensors?
Ben,

Your reply prompted the attached pictures and an additional test. Upon insertion of the white paper rectangle, the phone recognized the battery as not being fully charged and began charging when plugged in. After a full charge was again realized I tried two more things with the same result:

1. I removed the white paper rectangle so that no barrier existed between the 'sensors' and the phone.

2. I replaced the pink/red rectangle between the sensors and the phone.

Both resulted in full functionality when I disconnected the phone from the charger. I'm sure you can hypothesize as well as I can as to the possible scenarios here. What I can tell you for sure is that I removed the phone from the charger after seeing the 'Charge Complete' message at least four times with the same result . . . immediate shut off. I then removed the pink/red rectangle, replaced it with the white paper rectangle, plugged it back in, started receiving a charge, waited 5 minutes, unplugged it, and it did not shut off.

I have ordered another battery and will check the original color of the pink/red rectangle when I receive it.

Is this a safety feature, a product designed to fail, or something else entirely?


(Via Consumerist.)

Pirate Bay suing major media companies for sabotage, based on MediaDefender leak

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ThePirateBay has been digging through the enormous chunk of leaked email from MediaDefender, the sleazy enforcers used by the entertainment industry to fight P2P, and they've discovered evidence of illegal sabotage. So they're suing all the big movie and record comapnies in Sweden:

* Twentieth Century Fox, Sweden AB

* Emi Music Sweden AB

* Universal Music Group Sweden AB

* Universal Pictures Nordic AB

* Paramount Home Entertainment (Sweden) AB

* Atari Nordic AB

* Activision Nordic Filial Till Activision (Uk) Ltd

* Ubisoft Sweden AB

* Sony Bmg Music Entertainment (Sweden) AB

* Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Nordic AB

Link to Slashdot thread, Link to Pirate Bay thread

See also:

MediaDefender's source code leaked?

MediaDefender sends takedowns for leaked mail, gets savagely taunted

Giant email leak from MediaDefender -- MAFIAA hitmen

(Via Boing Boing.)

STriDER: Virginia Tech's creepy, three-legged bot

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Filed under:


Apparently, robot designers are worried that they're not creating automatons that are creepy enough, because a team of engineers at Virgina Tech have put something together that will give even the toughest of men chills. The robot in question is the three-legged STriDER (Self-excited Tripedal Dynamic Experimental Robot, not to be confused with CMU's Strider) which balances itself on two legs and then flips its body 180-degrees, bringing its third leg forward with the motion. According to project leader Dennis Hong, "STriDER's gait is closer to that of a human walking than most bipedal humanoid robots you see today," adding, "This is how we humans walk, we do not actively control our knees, we just let them swing." It does seem to be true, as the robot has an eerily life-like quality to its movements. Don't believe us? Take a look at the video after the break and see the tripod in action.

Continue reading STriDER: Virginia Tech's creepy, three-legged bot

 


(Via Engadget.)

Wed. Sept. 19th - Talk Like A Pirate Day!!!!!!

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Yarrr, 'ello me hearties. You be rememberin' today be talk like a pirate day? Don't yer forget it neither. If yer be forgettin how to talk like a pirate there be many many internets places that be explainin it for yer. Or perhaps yer be preferin' just the Wikipedia article?

Jolly Roger


'ere be a clip from the wikipedia article:
International Talk Like a Pirate Day (ITLAPD) is a parodic holiday invented in 1995 by John Baur ("Ol' Chumbucket") and Mark Summers ("Cap'n Slappy"), of the United States, who proclaimed September 19 each year as the day when everyone in the world should talk like a pirate.[1] For example, an observer of this holiday would greet friends not with "Hello", but with "Ahoy, me hearty!" The date was selected because it was the birthday of Summers's ex-wife and consequently would be easy for him to remember.

Rumors On The Internets: Osama On MySpace?

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  • What other generals have names that rhyme with something treasonous? [Michelle Malkin]

  • Lying has worked so well for the six years, why stop now? [Slate]

  • Last time we spent $13,000 for cookies and brownies was never, because that’s more money than we’ve ever seen in our lives. [Think Progress]

  • The MySpace friend race is the same as it’s been like pretty much this whole time. [Fresh Intelligence]

  • Actually, Bill Richardson makes a pretty good point. [MSNBC]

  • This time, OJ fucking did it, ok? [MoJo]

  • Hey, the CEO of an oil company sent workers over to a senator’s house to do some work on it for free? Can you guess the senator? We bet you can! [Political Wire]

  • Bush’s list of the 36 nations in Iraq doesn’t have 36 nations on it. This is how little it takes to lie to America. [TPM]


(Via Wonkette.)