Don't try this at home

[Suff]

This weekend I've been at my parents, hence my less than stellar online performance. I have had a replacement screen for my Elephone P9000 lite for 3 months now but have never had an opportunity to replace it.

I've replaced phone screens before, most recently with my Oukitel K6000 pro. So it's not a particularly strange thing to me.

So there I was, sitting at the dining room table working on a board, with a hair dryer and a scraper tool, when my scraper broke through the incredibly thin aluminium skin of the battery I was trying to get the sticky stuff off.

First I noticed an intense small red glow in the battery. I gave it a few seconds to see if it would settle down. When it started hissing I bolted for the back door (through two locked doors), to get it out on something non flammable. I used the tool and flipped the, now smoking and glowing, battery, onto the stone ground and let it burn itself to total destruction.

My Samsung Galaxy Note 7 moment. Except I already had the battery back off and was very near to actually removing it.

I am, now, unsurprised at the damage all those Galaxy note 7 phones did. I always knew the batteries were dangerous, but, until the Note7's started burning, wasn't aware how critical the insulation was inside them.

Ah well, the display is replaced (it was free) and is now awaiting a battery....

In the Interim I've replaced the Oukitel which is slowly dying. Not that surprising really as it was smashed between a Kevlar pad and my thigh and hip bone when my bike went down the road.

I Now have an Elephone P8 with 6gb of RAM, an octo core 2.5ghz processor (1.5/2.5 4x4) and 64 gig of storage. Not bad at 200 pounds but I was hoping to get a little more than a year out of the two Chinese clones. Seems that was wishful thinking. Then again I have another 2 years, at this rate, before I reach the price of a single Galaxy Note7 or Note8 (my preferred phone).... So I'm not crying too much because my Note2 became a millstone after 3 years and stopped working after 5.

I just have to get a Nano sim and if I'd know it was Nano this morning I would already have one from the Vodafone shop instead of having to trail into Paddington station and get one at 7am tomorrow morning.

On the ++ side, I was browsing the Vodafone site and I can upgrade my data from 20gb to 40gb for the princely sum of -10 pounds. Well on the headline contract anyway, I had a deal on mine and I was only paying 30 anyway. So I've doubled my data for no cost and another 12 month commitment I was going to use anyway.

Just a reminder. Don't fiddle in the back of Chinese mobile phones unless you are aware the batteries are made of rice paper that spontaneously ignites if you mistreat it...