Nokia and Matsushita are already dealing with a 46 million handset battery recall and now a battery NOT on the recall list exploded injuring a pregnant woman in India.

The 30-year old victim will supposedly be compensated.

I’ve always loved Nokia and its simplicity.  It pretty much jump-started the cell phone industry with its candy bar style phones that seem hard to part with.  When Nokia came out with their flip phones, it wasn’t that impressive or even nice to look at.  Now, Nokia is fighting back and getting smart with their very own, stylish and very functional smartphone, the N76.

 At $500 a pop, I think they need to try a bit harder.  Hey, at least they’re trying right?

After reports of a man dying in China as a cause of his cellphone batteries exploding, China has been cracking down on safety regulations, starting at the core of the problem: Motorola and Nokia.

Motorola and Nokia phone batteries were shown to have failed any safety tests administered on them and were prone to explosion on certain conditions. Funnily enough, both companies denied the batteries were theirs, hinting that the batteries ere counterfeit.

Cao Wenzhuang, a high-ranking official, was given the death penalty for accepting over $300,000 in bribes and approving counterfeit items. Counterfeit products have been distributed in China since the 1980’s, but have become increasingly more dangerous and erratic. This includes the lithium-based batteries found in cellphones computers. Even certain brands of Chinese toothpaste could be dangerous, which has shown to contain traces of diethylene glycol, a chemical responsible for 200 deaths in Haiti and Panama.

Over 30,000 inspectors were sent nationwide to find substandard foods, drugs and consumer products. As of this week, the reports shown that nearly 20 percent of the nation’s food and consumer products were found to be substandard or tainted. Nokia insists that its products are still appropriate for recreational use and there will be efforts to crack down on counterfeiting.

Source

Nokia just released an update to their Internet Tablet OS 2007 Edition which brings Skype client support, Flash 9 browser support, 8GB memory card support, and longer battery performance when surfing bits over wireless.

For all five of the players that used Nokia’s N-Gage without irony, Nokia has good news for you. In order to boost possible sales, there are now plans to bring the N-Gage to your home computers. One product in the works is entitled "Project White Rock," which promises to take the level of N-Gage gaming to another level. The game will, of course, also be available on the N-Gage.