Hi All, Please stay with me on this one... My father in law is 83 and the story goes as follows. He has a mobile phone. As he cannot understand how to use the phonebook function, he keeps the numbers on a piece of paper which is stuck on the back of the phone. He took the phone into the garden and was trying to dial a number which meant he needed to look at the back, turn the phone around and push the numbers, then refer to the back again for the next number and so-on. Well, he dropped the phone. Unfortunately there was a bucket of water nearby and the phone managed to find its way into the bucket. Well, the phone did not float! He rescued it from the bucket and found that it had filled up quite quickly and that it has stopped working. He shook it to get the remaining water out and tried turning it on again - but to no avail. He still wanted to make that call and sought a way of speeding the drying-out process. It must have been about this point in time that cartoons would place a light-bulb over the head of the character having an idea - I can see one over my father-in-law's head. He wrapped the phone in a small towel and placed it on the turntable of the microwave oven! Setting the timer for 10 seconds at full power, 900W of 2.4GHz bombarded the Nokia 3310. Ding. He opened the oven and unwrapped the phone. The once grey-green display was dark blue. If his eye-sight was not so poor he would have seen the cracked LCD. About then my wife came home and he said his phone was broken. She gave him her old one and told him to put his SIM card in. The new phone just kept insisting that he "insert SIM". My wife left the house just before I arrived. I get the full story! I took the back of the ZAPPED phone off. You could smell the burnt electronics. The battery was intact and there was a clear crack in the LCD. I phoned the service provider and explained that my father-in-law required a new SIM card. I guess that these usually cost 5 or 10GBP but I have never purchased one. The woman asked what had happened to the old SIM (I guess to check if it had been stolen). Well, the operator seemed to think that this excuse was the best that she has heard and put it at the top of her list for "daft things to do with a mobile phone" and is sending a new SIM with the credit transferred across from the old one - all for free. All is well that ends well... I have explained that the radio in the phone didn't like the 1000 Watts of radio in microwave oven - and he has promised not to do it again! To the point. Has anyone seen a warning notice in any user handbook of any battery powered electrical device warning of the hazards of placing the device in a microwave oven and turning the oven on? :-) Does any one know how long the oven would need to run before the phone caught fire or the Lion battery exploded? I like the comment from one of my colleagues - can he claim under the EMC directive because the phone was obviously not immune! I thought you might like the story and debate the finer points of warning notices - EMC immunity etc:-(( Have a good week-end Tim
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