Using A Mobile Phone while Charging

Our smartphones have become such an essential part of our lives that it can sometimes be hard to leave them alone, even when they are charging. But using your phone while you are charging it can be hazardous. It can threaten your life and cause potential damage to your phone. There have been several reports of people either being very seriously injured or killed due to explosions when using their phone while charging.

1. Overheating If you keep using your phone while charging it, it will become prone to overheating – a problem that could cause the harmful chemicals present in the battery to leak, which could cause the battery to explode or the phone could switch off permanently.

2. Creates A Bulge Using your phone while it is charging can cause the battery to expand in size which will eventually lead to the battery exploding. If you feel a slight bump at the back of your phone, there are good chances that its battery has started to bulge already.

3. Affects Charging Capacity While the battery of your phone can last for 18 hours after being fully charged, always using it while charging will spoil the battery, so eventually, you might get just 7 hours of battery life after it is fully charged.

4. Messes Up The Charger If you constantly use your phone while it’s charging, you might end up ruining your charger. You may need to get a new one eventually.

5. Hurt Yourself You are at risk of electrocuting yourself while using your phone when it’s charging. You can lose your life if your battery explodes or you get a severe electric shock.

> What is more dangerous is sitting in the car while fueling, then getting back out. During cold dry conditions, for those of you who live in areas where there is real winter, it is easy to build a static charge which can be an ignition source.

Absolutely true. As one who has worked around electronics all my life, often in low-humidity, static-prone environments, I'm always grounding myself -- it's pure force of habit now -- plus wearing all-cotton clothes as much as possible, and non-insulating (e.g. leather) shoes.

On those rare occasions when I have to get back into the car while the pump is running, I ground myself not only to the car chassis, but also to the metal frame of the gas pump box (NOT the nozzle). I figure that while the car frame is the most likely point for a static spark to jump, the car frame is insulated from the true ground (by the rubber tires), so it's not a bad idea to ground the car too.

Highway toll collectors used to get static shocks from drivers all the time until they installed grounding wires that brush under each vehicle's chassis as they pull into the toll booth area (or some other means of grounding the vehicle chassis).

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.