"Pop!"

That's the last thing Texas resident Aron Embry claims he heard before his Motorola Droid 2 phone "exploded" in his ear Thursday morning, leaving a trail of blood dripping down his face, according to his account, told to reporters at WFAA-TV in Dallas/Forth Worth, Texas.

Embry—and his hearing—survived the incident. And while the details are still unclear (both Motorola and the Consumer Products Safety Commission are investigating the case), this incident, if proven true, is different from most of the rare cases of gadget explosions for one key reason: It doesn't seem to have involved the battery. According to Embry, the screen broke into shrapnel, while the battery and phone innards survived intact. Could there be an explosion risk beyond the battery packed in your smartphone? We'll keep our eyes on the investigation to find out.

Lithium-Ion and Exploding Gadgets

The culprit in the vast majority of gadget explosions is the lithium-ion battery—marvels of electrical engineering that allow bright touchscreen phones and laptops to run for hours between charges. Of course, packing all that power into such a tiny package can have its downsides.

"We've had a few hundred incidents with lithium-ion batteries in cellphones and notebook computers," Consumer Products Safety Commission spokesman Scott Wolfson says. "Not all of these resulted in injuries, but there are cases involving overheating, smoking, and potential fires."

It should also be noted that, although there a few well-publicized cases of exploding laptops a few years ago, the industry has since tightened its standards—batteries now come with safeguards to shut down or vent if they begin to overheat—and such occurrences are now extremely rare (not that they were ever very common).

So how can you prevent your phone from exploding? The Consumer Product Safety Commission has three tips for consumers.

1. Don't use chargers or batteries that aren't designed to work with a particular phone. Users should be particularly wary of knock-offs and counterfeit accessories.

2. Keep your phone away from excessive heat. That means don't leave it in a car in the middle of the summer, or near a heater or stove.

3. Keep the battery's positive and negative connections from crossing. This is typically caused by a piece of metal coming into contact with the battery.

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