Off-topic -- replacing a smartphone battery
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This is off topic for the subject of this group, but almost everyone here will be faced with this eventually, and the people here are tech-savvy folks fully capable of doing what I did, so I'm sharing it anyway.
Tonight I did something I've been planning (and to some extent dreading) for several months. The buzzards have been circling for the battery in my Samsung S10e smartphone for quite a while, but I didn't think paying someone to replace it would be worth the money. So I replaced it myself, using an iFixit battery and repair kit, plus their online repair guide. And the job went fine. I've installed batteries in electronic devices before, but modern phones are waterproof, which means the back covers are glued on with heat-sensitive adhesive. The part I feared was removing that cover, since you need to apply enough heat to soften the glue, but too much heat applied to a lithium battery could do very bad things. (The warning in red in this photo, and similar ones throughout iFixit's online guide, definitely focus the mind). The iFixit instructions for this phone are available free at and they're worth reading if you question whether you can do this job -- iPhones with glued-on backs have their own instructions but are similar (There are also many comments in these instructions, including some added by yours truly under the name "MikeT-NYC"). But I was frankly amazed at obliviousness of some of the others who did this job including one commenter who keeps calling iFixit "criminals" for providing instructions that were totally wrong -- it's fairly obvious that he or she was trying to fix a different phone and was reading the wrong instructions. Also, there were many commenters trying to fix their phones without the proper equipment, particularly for removing the cover. The iFixit kit ($38.96) includes an "iOpener" -- a microwave-heatable gel pack like the kind sold in drug stores for sore muscles, but the size of a large hot dog. Several people asked if they could use a heat gun instead. Of COURSE you can, if you're a fool. I have several heat guns, but a heat gun puts out about 500 degrees, and broadcasts the heat everywhere. The iOpener is a slim little gel tube that gets to about 150 F -- just uncomfortable to the touch -- and concentrates the heat in a thin strip, so you can nicely heat the edges of the cover without cooking your battery or the electronics. The iFixit toolkit is cheap and smartphones are very expensive. So why would anybody with a three-digit IQ blast 500 degrees onto a phone (containing a battery well-known for becoming an incendiary device) in order to save $39 on a repair kit? All in all, this kit was complete and the instructions were thorough. And so far the battery seems to be a good one. (I've "repaired" other devices with eBay batteries that turned out to be little improvement on the one I removed). So if your phone battery is dying and you're reasonably handy, go for it. |
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I've fixed a few phones over the years, the newer ones definately require more patience to get them apart. iFixit generally do a good job with their guides, if you fall following those then repair probably isn't for you.? We all have an inflated sense of our abilities (I mean how hard can it be?) but as the old George Carlin joke goes, look at how dumb the average person is, then you realise half of people are dumber than that. Most adhesives release at about 80-90 Celcius (a bit below bolling water), a 2000W shop heat gun might be a bit excessive, but a hair dryer works fine. The pro's use a heat plate that runs at 90c, you put the phone on it for about 10 minutes.? I've got one I use for PCB soldering stuff, too small and too hot for phones.? A few of them just use an oven, just roast the phone for 10 minutes.? I've used a toaster oven to get decals off metal parts, works great. The EU is forcing manufacturers to have replaceable batteries, so repair might get easier in future. My current phone is supposedly a rugged one, I've yet to break it.? It does have a bunch of visible screws that don't look decorative, so maybe it is easier to take apart. I only got it (Doogee S98) because it's got a thermal camera, a surprisingly handy thing to have. Tony On Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 14:51 Miket_NYC <mctaglieri@...> wrote:
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