LG Says Phone Did Not Kill South Korean Man

November 30, 2007 – 9:56 am

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LG wants to set the record straight. They say it was an industrial accident, and not an exploding battery in one of their cell phones that killed a South Korean worker.

The unnamed worker was found dead Wednesday with a melted cell phone in his breast pocket. Initial reports quoted police as saying they presumed the death was due to the cell-phone battery exploding.

The initial reports “led to the unfair assumption by the media and the general public that an LG product was somehow the cause of this tragedy. This undeservedly damaged the company’s reputation for more than a day,” cell phone maker LG Electronics said in a statement.

The story made headlines worldwide in part because several companies have had to recall batteries in recent years because of defects that could cause the batteries to explode and injure users. Earlier this year the world’s biggest cell phone maker, Nokia Corp., issued an advisory about faulty batteries in some of its phones. It offered to replace about 46 million Nokia-branded BL-5C batteries because they could short circuit and overheat while recharging.

So it looks like the battery was not to blame.

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