Motorola and Nokia made mobile exploding batteries

CHINESE AUTHORITIES say mobile phone batteries for Motorola and Nokia phones being made in that country failed safety tests and were prone to explode.

The mandarins in the southern Guangdong Province, where shedloads of electrical gear is made, said that the mobile phone batteries, made by the Motorola and Sanyo operation in Beijing, failed safety tests and were exploding under certain conditions.

According the the Herald Tribune, the batteries were being distributed by companies based in the Guangdong Province, near Hong Kong.

It is not certain how many of the phones ended up in containers heading for foreign parts but the ships' captains had better hope for swift passage.

The announcement comes suspiciously close to news that a 22-year-old man in western China was killed after his Motorola cellphone exploded in his shirt pocket.

Motorola and Nokia have denied links to any of the distributors of the problem batteries and claimed that they must be cheap knock offs.

Yang Boning, a spokesman for Motorola in Beijing, claimed the batteries the Chinese authorities tested were fakes.

Nokia said it did not manufacture batteries in China and that the company had no business ties with the Chinese distributors named in the safety reports. µ