Cell phone manufacturer Nokia is offering to replace 46 million rechargeable batteries in its cell phones because they could overheat while being charged.

The company has issued a product advisory saying there have been 100 overheating incidents with the Nokia-branded BL-5C battery manufactured by Matsushita Battery Industrial Co. of Japan. No serious injuries or property damage have been reported. Nokia says the batteries could overheat resulting in a short and causing the battery to dislodge.

Nokia has several suppliers for BL-5C batteries that have collectively produced more than 300 million BL-5C batteries. The advisory applies only to the 46 million batteries manufactured by Matsushita between December 2005 and November 2006.

The product advisory follows a series of battery recalls over the past year. In August 2006, Sony Corp. replaced 9.6 million notebook computer batteries and Dell also recalled computer batteries.

In March computer maker Lenovo recalled about 205,000 lithium-ion laptop computer batteries made by Sanyo.