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Fire Brigade Warn About Overcharging Phones Catching Fire On Twitter

Fire Brigade Warn About Overcharging Phones Catching Fire On Twitter

Don't overheat your phone!

Laura Hamilton

Laura Hamilton

Running out of phone battery gives us serious anxiety. Our whole lives are on there! It's our alarm clock, our way of communicating with the world - it's our everything. Our smart phone is bae.

But over-charging your phone can cause serious problems. If you have an older phone, or a counterfeit device, overcharging can cause the phone to overheat and catch on fire - which is not great if you're charging it under your pillow. Or is that just me?

Last Thursday, the Dublin Fire Brigade responded to 200 calls in 24 hours, and one of them was a fire caused from a phone charger that had overheated. As this happens more often than it should, the firemen took to Twitter to warn people about the dangers of overcharging your phone.

Scary stuff, eh?

Dublin Fire Brigade often tweet about phone related fires - trying to warn the good people of Dublin to be vigilant and keep safe when using mobile phone devices in the house.

The devastation caused by the fires started by mobile phones is severe. We usually keep our phones close to us, charging them on our bedside tables, or keeping them in our beds. If they were to catch on fire, the damage is serious, and potentially life threatening.

Of course, it's not only in Ireland where there are these kind of issues. Dublin Fire Brigade isn't the first to warn people - London Fire Brigade has taken to Twitter about this issue, too.


The stuff of nightmares...

But don't worry, as long as you don't leave the house while you're charging your device, you should be ok. Back in the day, overcharging mobile phone was a serious problem as the older nickel-centric batteries would 'forget' what their full capacity was if you didn't fully drain them before charging again.

But these days, smart phones have lithium-ion batteries and it's much safer. They have a much smarter way of counting their charges; if you use 60 percent of your battery's life, then recharge it, it won't count that as a complete charge cycle. Over the course of the next day's use, once it hits 40 percent discharge, it will count that as one charge cycle.

They keep their cool and don't spontaneously combust.

It's a myth that you can't use your phone while it's charging (something we do all the time) or that you have to keep to the same brand of cable/charger.

And considering that these days, our phone contracts last for approximately two years and then we get upgraded the batteries in our phones aren't even that old!

All you have to watch out for is if they overheat - if it gets over 35C then that's a problem.

Featured Image Credit: Twitter