Overheating smartphone warning for Japanese consumers

The National Consumer Affairs Centre of Japan issued a warning on Thursday about overheating smartphones. There were 75 reports of smartphone-caused burn injuries in Japan between April 2009 and December 2013, and 1,032 reports altogether of smartphones overheating during the same period, the center said. The number of reports has increased yearly, hitting a record 523 in fiscal 2012, and is expected to rise further in fiscal 2013, which ends next month, the center said.

The centre said smartphones might be at greater risk of overheating than other mobile phones as they consume more electricity and must be charged more frequently. It advised consumers to take care in handling charging terminals, and asked the Telecommunications Carriers Association to do more to make consumers aware of the risks and to develop smartphones invulnerable to overheating. The center said its experiments indicated that when a broken charging terminal was used, the temperature around the terminal rose to more than 100 C.

Among the reported incidents, a woman in her 20s in Osaka suffered a low-temperature burn on her cheek when she used an overheated smartphone for about eight minutes. Also, a Saitama man in his 50s who went to bed after leaving his smartphone plugged into a personal computer, said he awoke to a burning smell and found the charging terminal melted and a nearby mat burned.

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