This week, Nokia issued a product advisory for their BL-5C batteries manufactured by Matsushita between 12/2005 ~ 11/2006. There have been rare occurrences of battery overheating and customers are allowed to exchange their batteries if they have any concerns.
Most of us have long noticed the Data Matrix barcodes printed on Nokia batteries or on the phones itself beside the IMEI, but this is the first time I see them close to being used to interact with the end customer. In this case, of course, the end user uses the Battery Identification Number (which is what is encoded as the Data Matrix) to determine if they have a good battery or not.
I guess in such scenarios, the phone wouldn't be able to scan the barcode on its own battery. So, it might be pretty convenient if one can use his/her webcam to perform this kind of task. Scanning barcodes can be achieved by using an application such as QuickMark for WebCam or HOOP, but making sure that it knows where to look up the information (Nokia's database) would require some sort of arrangement between the application and the database. Probably wishful thinking on my part, but it'd be cool though.
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