

Are Sony products ticking "fail" bombs just waiting to go off? Many consumers in Japan still subscribe to the belief that the tech titan purposely designed its devices to break immediately after their warranty expires, according to a report.

The Telegraph reports on the "timer" myth that has plagued Sony for 20 years. It started out as an urban legend that the tech-obsessed Japanese had joked about in manga and vented about in online forums. But in 2006, the recall of more than 4.1 million Dell laptops containing faulty Sony batteries drove the rumor into social consciousness as a serious theory. (If you include laptops made by Sony, Toshiba, Lenovo, Fujitsu and Apple in addition to Dell, the grand total was actually 9.6 million laptop batteries worldwide, according to a previous Wired report.)

Explosive batteries greatly damaged Sony's reputation. The company has been working to dispel the timer myth for years, but every incident of product failure post-warranty perpetuates the legend. Sony's PlayStation 3 still remains highly popular because it is allegedly exempt from the timers' curse, according to the Telegraph. (My PS3 hard drive died 3 months post-warranty, mind you, but that was probably due to my two-month-long obsession with playing Borderlands.)

"For a nation proud of their technological innovations, burning laptops and the biggest product recall in history were not exactly easy to deal with," the Telegraph wrote. It's a fascinating story by the Telegraph definitely worth a read.

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Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com