Returning back into the conversation for a bit. Was speaking with a friend over this weekend and he made a comment to me that at least shed light on the reason for the limitation of “only a cell phone”. The reasoning is that a cell phone only has a single battery. Whereas, laptops, iPads, and the like have multiple batteries. You only need one battery to power the device and have it run for a period of time. The extra batteries only give you longer device life away from charging. So what he was saying is that it is possible to create an explosive material that fits into the space that a battery would go, and that apparently the density can be made to appear on x-Ray similar to a real battery. Thus, you could get one of these through both the X-Ray and the power-on tests.
That leaves only the ETD swab as the only chance to find this at the checkpoint. His belief is that they may have found a way to hide the explosives from this as well. Not sure if this is actually possible, but the idea is that the explosives are contained within shell of the battery and then cleaned of any residue on the outside and transferred into the device in a clean environment. The device is then resealed and may not have any detectable residue on it. Not sure if this is truly possible, but even if it left trace amounts, would there truly be enough to capture via a swab.
This may explain the “logic” behind the levels of restrictions. Not the restrictions themselves.
Someone above mentioned the shipping of the devices when they are new and how that isn’t/hasn’t been a problem. I think there are two underlying reasons why they haven’t had many issues with those. First of all, the batteries are brand new, so have had little chance to become damaged. Second, these devices are shipped in a completely powered off state. The biggest problem with electronics like this in the hold of the planes is we do not know, nor are we going to be able to ensure that all of these devices are completely powered down when loaded. This also doesn’t prevent the device from turning on during the flight. New items are shipped such that inadvertent powering on doesn’t happen.
With respect to the “tamper” seal or going along that route. There are two issues I see with that. The first is how do you repair the device? Does a repair of the device render it no longer allowable on a plane? What about refurbished models? If you do allow repairs, then how do they recreate the seal? And if they can recreate the seal, how do you verify that it hasn’t been tampered with during that time.
The only real answer I can see is to use the technology that can determine the chemical composition of items in the device. I believe there is a baggage scanner, either in use or a prototype that could detect the actual chemicals present.