Merely days after LG put the brakes on sales of its Z1-AE007 laptop due to suspicions of a faulty battery within, yet another lappie in South Korea is making headlines for its overheating, er, abilities. Reportedly, the battery in a P10 computer, produced in 2002, "melted" after inexplicably emitting smoke during use. The device managed to burn a bed and a certain part of the floor, but thankfully, no "big fire" was started. According to company spokesman James Chung, Samsung is now "checking details of the incident," but the actual manufacturer of said battery has yet to be revealed.

It's not like LG hasn't had issues with its batteries before, and even after confirming that they were unquestionably safe just last week, the firm has suddenly removed its Z1-AE007 from the market after suspecting that faulty batteries may be included. Reportedly, one of said models "caught fire" in Seoul and presumably startled the graduate student who owned it, but a company spokesperson stopped short of proclaiming that a recall was in order. Furthermore, the individual noted that "the matter should be consulted with the battery maker," essentially shoving every ounce of blame as far as humanly possible away from LG.

[Via FarEastGizmos]

Given some of the potential really bad things that can go wrong with professionally-made laptops batteries, we're not sure how good an idea it is to attempt to build your own, although that doesn't seem to have stopped some from trying. As the video after the break courtesy of "Kipkay" shows (he of the flashlight cellphone charger), the whole processes appears to be relatively straightforward, if not wrought with danger, and it will certainly save you a few bucks compared to the ready-made variety. Though we're guessing those savings may seem a bit less attractive if you suddenly find yourself in need of a whole new laptop, or some new eyebrows.

[Via Uber-Review]

Following through on its promise, upstart Boston-Power has taken the wraps off its much-hyped laptop battery, now officially known as "Sonata," showing off the new-and-improved lithium-ion technology at the DEMO 07 conference that's rolled into Palm Desert, California this week. The company's also taken the opportunity to add some more specificity to its claims, boasting that the Sonata battery will last the life of your laptop and charge faster than any other batteries on the market, filling up to eighty percent capacity in just half an hour -- not to mention be less likely to explode. What's more, the battery will apparently not require any design changes on the part of laptop manufacturers, with HP already working with the company in the testing and validation process -- and presumably set to be one of the first to offer the battery. Not surprisingly, you can also expect the battery to come in at a premium price compared to traditional laptop batteries, although the company isn't saying exactly how much more they'll run. We should find out soon enough, however, with the first laptops using Sonata batteries expected to ship sometime this summer.

Read - Boston-Power Press Release
Read - CNET, "Start-up to launch safer notebook battery"

While the IEEE is "hard at work" revising the laptop battery standard so these explosive cells permanently become a thing of the past, Panasonic has developed a new rechargeable battery pack with increased capacity and energy density, hopefully working on previous heat issues as well. The prototype, which is being shown here at CES, reportedly boasts a "20- to 40-percent" increase in capacity by using "an alloy material for the negative electrode instead of a commonly used carbon material" such as graphite carbon. Additionally, energy density per volume is increased to 740 Wh/L, which is 40-percent higher than that of the company's existing product. Notably, Panasonic claims that this newfangled Li-ion pack will tout a "heat-resistant layer made of insulating metal oxide," which purportedly "ensures improved safety while maintaining a current capacity as high as 3.6 Ah." As expected, there was no word on if (or when) this prototype would actually hit production, but the firm did state that it would like to commercialize it "within a few years" if everything progressed nicely.

If all goes well for fuel cell designer EnerAge, you may soon be able to fill up your laptop at the same time that you fill up your car's gas tank. CNET is reporting that by early 2007, the Los Angeles-area company claims that it will demo a 25-watt fuel cell that will keep your laptop juiced. While we've already seen a few fuel cell hopefuls, this new one is potentially among the most innovative. EnerAge's fuel cell allegedly will burn any hydrocarbon fuel, including methane, butane, methanol or ethanol -- so it would seem that burning diesel or gasoline is within the realm of possibility as well. While there have been countless previous attempts at fuel cells, EnerAge's design is a "direct oxidation fuel cell," which CNET explains as such: "It mixes air with a hydrocarbon. When the materials come in contact with the membrane, electrons are released. The reaction also results in byproducts like water and CO2." However, there still remains a huge engineering puzzle to get around, which is that the fuel cell itself can reach temperatures of as high as 600 degrees Celsius (that's 1,112 degrees Fahrenheit). Yikes. And let's not forget the carbon dioxide factor -- exactly what we're trying to get rid of from automobile and coal emissions (to name a couple). As you can imagine, we're skeptical at best, but any solution that might enable increasingly plugless computing is worthy of a second glance by us.

Yeah, we're trying to hold back the snickering too. It seems the IEEE has chosen now as the time to start looking over those (previously innocent) battery protocols, and the timing couldn't be any more convenient. Rather than buckling down and getting a finalized 802.11n standard out the door, the task force is being silently forced to take a good, hard look at battery criteria. Currently focused on IEEE P1825 -- the designation for lithium-ion and lithium-ion polymer batteries used in digital cameras and camcorders -- the crew is hoping to set more uniform regulations for the "design, production, and evaluation" of said cells. The update is supposedly aimed at revising "design analysis, testing and qualification checks" to ensure those QA reports filter out any, um, potentially explosive misfits, and while the project is scheduled to be completed "within 18 months," we know how quickly these folks let their deadlines slip. But the force isn't letting those increasingly-concerned computer manufactures get too much of a head start, as the IEEE 1625 is also slated for a (very necessary) revamp -- which makes perfect sense considering its label: "laptop battery standard."

There were some rumblings a couple of months ago that Dell had known about its laptop battery issues for a while, but now InfoWorld reports that a Dell spokesperson has confirmed that they had been discussing the issue with Sony (the maker of the batteries) since October of last year and had decided to hold off on issuing a recall "until those flaws were clearly linked to catastrophic failures causing those batteries to catch fire." Sony did make some design changes to help alleviate the problem (like strengthening the lining of battery cells), but that doesn't do much for batteries that are already in the market. We can understand not wanting to issue a recall until it's clear that there truly is a problem (rather than just a potential problem), but let's just say that Dell and Sony are lucky that no one's been killed or seriously injured by an exploding battery.

[Thanks, Emanuel]