This story from today's Hindustan Times demonstrates why you should not use counterfeit or inappropriate batteries for your mobile. Having (a) just bought a new Nokia N95 and (b) ordered a new battery for my old Samsung Z510, this is an apt moment for me to ponder the health and safety risks involved! This woman survived the exploding mobile, which was in her pocket, but what if it had been in use against her ear? Nokia are investigating. Has your mobile caused any accident? Leave me a comment if it has - even if it was by tripping up a centipede!

Most people in Britain - two out of three it is suggested - do not have mobile phone insurance. Apparently this is usually because it is simply too expensive. Yet there are nearly one million mobile thefts every year! I wonder what the statistical probability of theft is given that the UK has 60 million people and not all of them will own a phone but, also, many people now have more than one mobile phone! Kids too. Home insurance does not necessarily cover your phone!  Has your phone been stolen and if so, did your insurance cover it? I'd be interested to know if anybody has had to battle their insurer to have them pay out.

Finance News online tells us the following about phones being dropped down the lav every year! Or read it for yourself here folks. Excuse me, call of nature.....(..."hello, hello...?...")

 

Mobile phone losses costing Brits dearly
UK mobile phone owners are losing around 855,000 handsets down the loo every year, which means that around £342 million worth of mobile phone is quite literally being flushed away annually, new research shows.

Price comparison service SimplySwitch.com found that around 4.5 million handsets are lost or damaged each year, with many being left behind at the pub, in a taxi or on a bus.

Stranger mobile phone losses include pets chewing the handsets or owners accidentally putting them in the washing machine.

Men were more likely to lose their mobile phones than women, but carelessness reduced with age with just 16 per cent of the over-55s saying they had lost or damaged their handset, compared to 40 per cent of under-34s, the survey found.

"Of the 18 million new handsets bought in the UK every year, roughly 4.5 million will end up lost or damaged," said Karen Darby of SimplySwitch.com.

"With handsets now costing up to £400 and people often opting out of the insurance package, there's more reason than ever to look after your mobile."

Crikey o Reiley, here is something disconcerting from Computing.co.uk - read the full piece but below is the five viruses for mobiles that are out there. Charming little things. Especially easy to propagate via Bluetooth apparently. Until recently I thought that bluetooth was a dental condition but apparently its now a gateway for one of these little f***ers!

Cabir (1) - spread via Bluetooth and MMS, it does not directly damage the phone but continually tries to detect other devices to infect, greatly reducing battery life.

CommWarrior (2) - spread as above, it resets the phone on 14th of every month deleting all personal data.

Skulls (1) - downloaded by user, it disables phone applications like phone book, SMS, media player and changes all phone icons to a skull and crossbones leaving it unusable.

CardTrap (2) - spread as above, it overwrites applications such as the phone book with corrupted copies. These applications will no longer work when you next reboot the phone, rendering the phone useless. It also drops installers for Skulls, CommWarrior and Cabir onto the device and puts some Windows viruses onto the memory card so that plugging the memory card into a PC will result in the PC being infected as well

Doomed (1) - spread as above, it disables some applications and attempts to prevent the phone from restarting as well as installing Cabir, CommWarrior, Fontal, CardTrap, CardBlock and Skulls. It can also sometimes cause other Bluetooth devices in the vicinity of the infected device to restart.

 

OK, here we go for latest news on crazy ideas they are thinking of or even doing to our mobile phones to make them even more indispensable (yes, yes, its a tautology, well spotted)............ try this: mobile phones that can be turned into wallets (wallet phones); the moby that stinks...gives off a fragrance (hopefully this will make buses and trains smell nicer...) a phone the size of a credit card (why? I can hardly use that?!). I'm waiting for a reply from a man who contends the mobile phone can eradicate world poverty. I'll give him a blog all of his own when he gets back in touch! What other ideas have your heard of? One that wipes the dog's bum? One that hoovers the carpet? A mobile that makes the kids' packed lunches for school???