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Friendly reminder: Please don't bite your phone battery

Commentary: In a video posted online, a customer reportedly wants to check if a new battery is authentic -- using his teeth. Cue explosion.

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Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read
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Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.

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This surely caused a gnashing of teeth, if it really happened as reported.

 Miaopai screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

Some things might seem obvious.

But even these things are worth mentioning occasionally.

Please, therefore, allow me to say these words: Don't bite your phone battery.

I base this apparently absurd entreaty on a video that's making its way around the web.

It appears to show someone in a Chinese electronics store.

As the Taiwan News reports, the customer was looking for a replacement battery for his phone last Friday.

The news outlet insists that the action dimly portrayed here is the customer testing the authenticity of a replacement battery by biting it.

A puported store video posted online shows an explosive denouement.

There's no way of knowing what really went on here. Or even if anything authentic did. 

Who can forget the video that seemed to show music producer and performer CeeLo Green being injured by an exploding phone but that turned out to be nothing more than a bit of publicity?

Here, we have no idea what sort of battery it might have been, or whether it was a battery at all.

However, the clip does still serve as a reminder that meetings between electronic devices and the mouth might be best restricted to, oh, electric toothbrushes. Or, perhaps, electronic wind instruments.

More Technically Incorrect

The Taiwan News reports that no one was hurt, though a woman standing near the man certainly seems dazed. I very much hope the news is accurate.

Phone batteries, just like hoverboard batteries, are lithium ion and therefore notoriously unpredictable. 

Sometimes, they do explode. Sometimes, they explode so much that the product has to be taken off the market, as happened with the Samsung Galaxy Note 7. Twice.

In general, it's worth treating all batteries in electronics with caution.

And please, please, don't attempt to copy what this video purportedly portrays. 

It's bad enough hearing the sad tales associated with people eating Tide Pods.

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