It was just on my local news. The 7th grader was at school when all of a sudden he felt heat coming from his pants and saw flames. He stopped, dropped, and started to roll. He then ran to the office while taking off his pants and he went to the hospital. He suffered from 1st degree burns and he hopes to go back to school soon.

Its pretty scary and sad and I was just wondering what would cause the PSP to do this. Was it the battery overheating or did something else go wrong? Did this ever happen before? If I was this kid I would want to sue.

Never happened before. I would assume since the PSP has been out awhile that it was the kids fault. Maybe used a bad battery or something related. It could be the PSP of course but i doubt it.

Maybe a battery short or something?

The battery is never warm unless it is a) charging, or b) if the PSP has been playing a game for a while. It never gets hot though.

If I was that 12 year olds parent, Sony would be forking me over some cash pretty soon.

Lawsuit central

It wouldn't be the first time Sony batteries had problems, after all they recalled a big number of batteries some time ago due to similar problems... However this seems like an isolated incident, at least I haven't heard of such problems with the PSP before this one.

This story goes to show that devices containing batteries should be placed as far from your body as possible.

do you mean this story? http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080206/NEWS03/80206037/1054/SPORTS06

It may not be sony's fault as this is obviously not a widespread thing. But, if it is the battery then sony may have to payout as some lawyer will connect it to the many cases of laptop battery issues.

I wonder if this was a new psp and maybe a new batch of batteries, thus, this may not be the last we hear of combustible psp's.

battery may have overheated