Panasonic has issued a major recall announcement for its tablet battery packs, on account of fire hazard. They’ve recalled 280,000 tablet batteries because of the potential problem and I should mention it’s a preventative and voluntary recall.
It’s a classic case of “better safe than sorry” and we like to see companies taking responsability for potential flaws. Sometimes it’s not even their fault, but rather the fault of a partner, but still accountability is a big deal nowadays. The battery packs in question were used on the company’s rugged tablets. A dozen batteries suffered from critical failures, posing fire problems.
Models covered by the recall are the Toughpad FZ-G1 for example (Mk1, Mk2 and Mk3-series), that have been found prone to short circuits aftered a prolonged use in extreme temperatures. 16 reports of combusted batetry packs have been confirmed between March 2017 and April 2017, 12 of which came from customers in North America, one in Japan and one in Australia.
Panasonic will provide free replacement batteries to affected customers. Owners of defective slates are advised to first find their device SKU (listed here) by checking the backside of the device. Then they should remove the battery and check if it’s one of these models: FZ-VZSU84U, FZ-VZSU89U or FZ-VZSU96U. There’s also the advice to download a firmware utility from Panasonic here, that reduces charging from 4.2 to 4.0 volts and lowers the peak operating syttings.
Due dilligence folks, due dilligence!
