If you were thinking about shipping a phone or tablet via the US Postal Service internationally, you better hurry up. It was just announced via a press release that as of May 16th, the USPS will no longer ship anything containing lithium batteries internationally, which of course includes pretty much every single phone and tablet.
The ban is due to lithium batteries potentially catching fire or exploding under certain conditions. Which has been the cause of at least two airline accidents since 2006. The new policy isn’t likely to be permanent, the USPS is working with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the Universal Postal Union (UPU) to come up with a safe shipping solution, which they expect to have figured out by Jan 1st, 2013.
In the meantime, if you’re looking to ship a phone or tablet to someone out of the US, private companies like FedEx, UPS and DHL will still gladly service you, but it’s likely to cost you slightly more money.
[via Ars Technica]
