Paper power and burning batteries? What madness is this?

[intro]Nokia has issued a recall for overheating batteries, while boffins have created a paper battery using carbon nanotubes. Sounds like an explosive combination[/intro]

And in today’s battery news: Nokia has issued a recall for some of its BL-5C batteries (one of my favourite of the Nokia batteries, as used in 50 phones including such workhorses as the 6630 and the, erm, N-Gage).

The battery overheats, apparently, although it’s worth noting the recall only affects 46 million of the 300+million batteries that were produced for Nokia by Matsushita. ‘Only’ 46 million? Crikey. Anyway, you can find more over at Nokia’s battery site.

More intriguing is news that scientists at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (me neither) have created a biodegradable paper battery embedded with carbon nanotubes.

I’m not even going to try to describe how it works – the BBC makes a pretty good fist of it – but the idea of a flexible, lightweight battery seems appealing. The postage stamp-sized prototype produces 2.3V – enough to power a small light. Let’s hope that bigger versions won’t overheat…

Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home