The phones most of us carry around in our pockets every day hold a surprising amount of computing power. It’s somewhat taken for granted now that we can get broadband in our hands in most pla…
Adding a high quality smart switch to a 5-year old battery might do some good, of course. But this is a cluster of old batteries, all in bad shape for many years of usage under different circumstances, temperatures, etc. And they’re all different models. Each battery will need a different time for going from 20 to 80%… it’s wild.
I do this kind of risk assessment on the worst scenario, a fire could turn your home into ashes. The only option to me, being strict, would be removing those batteries (after all, your main goal is to re-use the other hardware.) But that’s only possible in a handful of phone models… it’s just unfortunate. I guess I should get a FairPhone next time!
I guess it’s better if you set up charge limiting, so that after reaching x percent it continues to run from the wall, but not charge the battery anymore. not all phones support charge limiting though, and even less suports idle charging, some have idle charging buggy and if it doesn’t work right after boot you have to reboot it to fix it. charge control almost always requires rooting if android.
but I guess its the same with laptops, except there even the chargers get hot
I used to use old phones (Nexus 6P, Galaxy Nexus, Moto X) as security cameras, stopped for exactly this reason. They all got really warm, even with the screen off, and I was uneasy about it. IIRC my Gnex removable battery started expanding a bit! That’s when I stopped using them for it.
You can use a battery powered device without the battery plugged in. I’ve never built capacitor bank for a more modern mobile device but its probably possible with off the shelf boards. The last one I built was years ago for a dentist office. It was a mp3 player they used for the hold music. Pulled the bad battery and built a fairly small capacitor bank. The only complication was getting the right resister for the third terminal. In the case of the mp3 player it was a temperature sensor. Modern phones use this channel to communicate battery info which might complicate things a bit.
Yeah. I get it. It’s good for old devices to be useful for years to come.
What about the battery though? Having a device with an old battery plugged in the socket 24/7 is a fire hazard.
I would love to use my old nexus 10 with this perfect screen today. There is still no way to use a mobile device without a battery plugged in…
Use a smart power switch.
Battery level drops below say 20% - turn switch on and start charging.
Battery level goes above 80% - turn switch off.
For Android, you could use something like the Tasker app to do the monitoring and switching.
This doesn’t address the fire hazard at all.
At all? What do you believe the fire hazard is then?
Adding a high quality smart switch to a 5-year old battery might do some good, of course. But this is a cluster of old batteries, all in bad shape for many years of usage under different circumstances, temperatures, etc. And they’re all different models. Each battery will need a different time for going from 20 to 80%… it’s wild.
I do this kind of risk assessment on the worst scenario, a fire could turn your home into ashes. The only option to me, being strict, would be removing those batteries (after all, your main goal is to re-use the other hardware.) But that’s only possible in a handful of phone models… it’s just unfortunate. I guess I should get a FairPhone next time!
Just take out the battery and keep it plugged in?
Unlike laptops, many phones simply won’t turn on without a battery connected.
Is that so with new phones? Last I tried with a Samsung S5, it did work.
It’s common, and especially so on devices that don’t have batteries which are intended to be user-removable - which is pretty much all new phones.
ok thanks for the info
I guess it’s better if you set up charge limiting, so that after reaching x percent it continues to run from the wall, but not charge the battery anymore. not all phones support charge limiting though, and even less suports idle charging, some have idle charging buggy and if it doesn’t work right after boot you have to reboot it to fix it. charge control almost always requires rooting if android.
but I guess its the same with laptops, except there even the chargers get hot
I used to use old phones (Nexus 6P, Galaxy Nexus, Moto X) as security cameras, stopped for exactly this reason. They all got really warm, even with the screen off, and I was uneasy about it. IIRC my Gnex removable battery started expanding a bit! That’s when I stopped using them for it.
You can use a battery powered device without the battery plugged in. I’ve never built capacitor bank for a more modern mobile device but its probably possible with off the shelf boards. The last one I built was years ago for a dentist office. It was a mp3 player they used for the hold music. Pulled the bad battery and built a fairly small capacitor bank. The only complication was getting the right resister for the third terminal. In the case of the mp3 player it was a temperature sensor. Modern phones use this channel to communicate battery info which might complicate things a bit.