If this unfortunate death is eventually attributed by LG, or the battery maker, to 'Excited Delirium', would Taser International Inc. sue for trademark infringement?

They find a man in a QUARRY, a place where one would expect the use of say, explosives, and the man has evidence of bodily damage similar to an explosion and they jump to the conclusion that it was his PHONE that exploded?!?!? WTF?!?!

He might have lived had the phone been in his trouser pocket.

I think the fact that his mobile phone was discovered with a melted battery and all the damage coincides with the area on his body where the phone had been kept (inside his shirt pocket) would lead any sane person to believe that this is the most likely explaination, yes.

However, simply because it was an LG phone does not mean LG or LG's battery provider are to blame. This is in Asia where "generic" battery replacements are rife. Many of the exploding battery cases have been traced back to 3rd party batteries being used that simply do not meet the standards required for sale in the EU or USA.

It exploded with enough force to fracture his spine and ribs yet not to blow itself out of his pocket. Far more likely he fell while "distracted" by a blaze in his shirt. Or fell for some other reason and the impact damaged the phone to the point of combustion.

Or he was too close to the Truth and the Machine Master ordered his phone to suicide in order to silence him forever. Someone should investigate that quarry as the Secret Base of the Machines!

Come on, we've all blown up batteries for kicks, haven't we? They get very hot very quickly, the plastic melts and releases the pressure. Not very forceful -- the best thing about blowing up batteries is that you sometimes get interesting coloured flames.

A much more likely scenario is that some other accident (explosives? heavy machinery? big lumps of rock?) did for the poor unfortunate and his mobe.

No, not "Far more likely he fell while "distracted" by a blaze in his shirt." if that were the case, his injuries would be consistent with a fall, but they werent...

and apparently you dont know too much about human anatomy or the kinetics of energy. given the location and direction of the explosive force from the battery in his shirt pocket, the material of his shirt would like be far stronger than that of his ribcage and spine, and definitely stronger than the tissue that makes up the lungs and heart. though the human body can endure many things and survive, even the tiniest impact can be devastating if applied in the right location, such as to the lungs or heart. it doesnt take much force at all to cause the heart fibrillate, a condition it cant recover from on its own. as for the spinal, its an extremely weak structure, you can fracture or rupture discs simply by stepping wrong or sneezing...

i once pulled ribcage muscles so severely that i missed 3 weeks from work from sneezing. how funny that was... boy did my co-workers have fun with that... 24 year old firefighter missed 3 weeks from work after a tragic sneezing accident...

Perhaps, and this is of course pure speculation, the chappie had a blasting cap in his pocket between his phone and his body.

Perhaps the explosion was the blasting cap detonating and what they should be exploring was the detonating mechanism behind the blasting cap going off.

of course nobody knows for sure....

can't think of a better icon

Sounds like he was crushed or hit by a vehicle, and the phone died too.

The investigator sat down next to him in a badly bent and somewhat charred chair then figured that the phone must have snapped the poor guy in half.

as an ex-military weapons specialist, let me put the speculation to rest.

The Human Body is mostly water.

Water amplifies pressure waves.

A small explosion that causes no visible signs of damage to the outside of the body has the capability to turn your organs to jelly.

If a phone was next to a heart (like in a in a breast pocket) when it exploded, it can very much kill you with no other obvious signs of injury. There need be no penetration into the body to kill you. No blood, no missing limbs... just massive internal cellular damage that leads to your untimely death.

And if the thing had exploded in his trouser pocket... well better to be dead than have your you know what turned to jelly, eh?

Didn't anyone consider that a quarry is a nice place to dump a body, and that the crushing weight of a falling body could possibly damage your cellphone. Vinnie and Guido might see the humor in a cellphone being blamed for their work, or maybe they were just "advisor's" to the medical examiner...

Fun, fun. Since we have almost NO factual or forensic info, we can assume anything. I like the blasting cap idea but that's too mundane. First, since he owns a mobile and works in a quarry, he's management therefore hated by the rest of the crew. He's always on the phone and getting out of way too much work. His co-workers, having enough of this poor guy's shirking, connect the blasting cap (knew I could use it somehow) to the phone's speaker, duct tape the phone to the guy's body, render him immobile (more duct tape) and call the phone from behind a rock pile or some piece of heavy equipment. Battery never had a chance. Almost good enough for a BQOFH.

Apologoes to BOFH.

I'm gone...

Is that the noise he made, as his phone took him out?

Obvious, really:

"My name is 'Suh!' How do you do!

Now you're gonna die!!"

Fan death.

Sounds like some has been reading one to many Bonds book. I see it Now. C4 in the phone boom.

"i missed 3 weeks from work from sneezing."

know what you mean; i once broke a rib coughing. that smarted.

Kate & Gerry McCann, in the quarry, with the mobile 'phone.

Hi all,

I've done some tests on old mobile phone packs and they can and do explode in flames if overcharged then shorted.

Had to use a screwdriver to initiate the reaction but its possible that overcharge-induced internal short could have been enough.

Then, the phone's battery casing acted like a shaped charge, in that the hot gases were briefly confined and burst out of one area. The force generated would be enormous (these things are used to compress plutonium in "Physics Packages") !

Lesson learned: do not do Li charging in software, its far too risky.

And they allow portable DVD players on planes? Li cells 10* the volume of mobile packs + overcharge + strategically placed drawing pin + fist = Instant incendiary device.

Oh, and there's the favourite camera flash hooked up to battery trick, this also induces rapid disassembly with flame :)

-A (IANAT) Next stop Gitmo... LOL!

"He did, however, describe such an explosion as 'virtually impossible'."

Oh, I'm sure that's a huge relief to the next-of-kin.

As was mentioned before, this man was too close to the Truth, and so he was silenced by a new mobile phone-shaped sniper round.

You didn't use the word mobe once in the entire article...

Didn't this happen to a welder not long ago? phone exploded and broke his ribs?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/04/exploding_mobile/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/14/nokia_thailand_handset/

hmm ok several then.. not unusual for quary staff to do a bit of welding..

wow im surprised that was left intact if they couldn't get anything from his dental records...

Sure, I know an explosion can jellify soft tissue. But fracture the spine? From the front? Without also blowing clear of the burning pocket? And if it's a phone battery going "foomsh", it's hardly a hand grenade (yes, yes, fragmentatiion yadda yadda), is it?

To those who conclude the damage cannot have been so bad because the phone was still in the pocket: who said there weren't shrapnel holes in the short pocket too?

I'm not saying that's what happened, I'm merely opening closed minds.

It turns out he was hit by an excavator - which damaged the battery enough for it to catch fire:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/exploding-phone-death-confession/2007/11/30/1196037111096.html

"just massive internal cellular damage"

Pun intended?