EE recalls Power Bars batch over overheating risk

The EE Power Bars were launched earlier this year in time for Glastonbury Festival and were promoted to festival-goers who could use the device to charge their phones before exchanging the chargers at cabins around the Glastonbury site for another fully charged one at no additional cost.

EE has distributed over 1.5m of the free Power Bars, which prove popular with users suffering from poor smartphone battery life.

The recall could affect up to 500,000 of EE’s Power Bars, of which half have already been taken out of circulation.

The operator is asking customers to immediately return those with the model number ‘E1-06′ to their nearest store.

EE is also temporarily suspending the Power Bar swap scheme while it conducts its investigation.

It said the devices could pose a fire risk, and urged people to return them to stores.

Late last month, 26-year-old medical student Katy Emslie revealed that an EE Power Bar that had been charging in her laptop while she slept exploded and shot across the room, before landing under her bed causing a fire.

If you’ve got an EE Power Bar, best check the little code on the side to see if you have one of the special potentially “fizzy” models.

“It is our intention to replace these chargers once we have completed our investigations; we will be in touch once these have been concluded”.

EE claimed that the issue was isolated and added that it wasn’t seeing “any issues of overheating with other batches and they meet all safety standards”.