The real thing?

There was a report a while ago about a mobile phone going up in flames while it was charging. This created a hue and cry about the deteriorating quality of mobiles, with some people even blaming the electricity board for frequent spikes that damaged electronic equipment. Later, it turned out that real culprit behind the incident was the battery - it was fake. The owner had bought a counterfeit battery because it was “50 per cent cheaper” than the original one. He ended up losing a mobile phone worth at least Rs 5,000 trying to save a couple of hundred rupees.

Apart from fake batteries, there are also fake mobile phone brands like ‘Nokie' or ‘Soni Eriskson', that are equally dangerous. Then there are brands that go by unheard of names claiming to have features equivalent to branded ones.

Most of these phones are assembled with cheap components and rarely conform to safety standards, including Specific Absorption Rate – the rate at which energy is absorbed by the body when exposed to radio frequency. All manufacturers are supposed to indicate the SAR in the phone manual. Most stick to the guidelines and publish it but many companies don't because the phones often do not meet SAR standards. Conforming to SAR standards would mean the use of better components and more testing, all of which would add to the cost of manufacturing. In a price sensitive market such as India, they just cannot afford it. With monitoring too being quite lax and consumers who aren't bothered about SAR or mobile radiation, many manufacturers get away by hawking phones that are too dangerous to use.

It's not just SAR, but also the components used that are important. Many unbranded phones use components that are suspect. As is evident in the incident mentioned above, its worthwhileto spend a little more on genuine parts, including batteries, than to see your phone go up in flames.

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