The Finnish mobile phone handset company Nokia has issued a recall of up to 14 million phone chargers after it was discovered that a non fatal shock could be caused. Announcing that they would be replacing the units, which were produced by the Chinese third party supplier BYD, they added that no injuries had been suffered and that the recall was a “precautionary measure” only.
With three handset models affected, including the AC-4U, AC-3E and AC-3U, BYD explained that “During internal tests we found the chargers could have some problems.” Nokia added that covers on the affected chargers could become loose, “potentially posing an electrical shock hazard if certain internal components are touched while the charger is plugged into a live socket”. Explaining that the issue “only applies to a restricted number of chargers manufactured over a short period available in a select number of countries”, they revealed that units bought in China, Argentina, Brazil and Britain were all safe.
It is not the first recall for Nokia, which had to recall chargers in 2007 over concerns that they might overheat. However, the latest recall is the largest in history, outdoing Sony, Dell and Apple. Sony recalled ten million computer batteries in 2006, whilst Dell also had to call back 4.1 million batteries after it was found that some faults caused laptops to burst into flames. Meanwhile batteries for Apple Computer were found to overheat, causing 1.8 million units to be recalled.
