What to do with a swollen battery

perfectly true "thumb up "

Depends on the design of the charging circuitry. While your statement of “battery being decoupled if fully charged” might be true on some devices, the usual (because simpler to design and cheaper due to less parts) approach is to power the device through the battery. Even if a charger is connected.

I feel that when battery is full-4.2v phone stops

current from the charger to discharge battery to

4v let's say.then again charges it to 4.2v and so on.effective way to unnecessary cycle the battery to lower its lifetime on purpose.

This is not true for mobile phones - my understanding is that they run off the battery regardless of whether they’re plugged into a charger or not.

The reason for this is that the battery is capable of delivered much greater transient current than the charger is, and there are several devices in a phone (the radio transmitter for a start) that demand high transient currents from their power source. So the phone is wired to charge the battery from the charger & power the phone from the battery - it cannot run itself from the charger. I don’t know whether the same is true for modern laptops.

Hi Domenico, a swollen battery won’t necessarily catch fire but is at much higher risk of doing so. Many house fires have been started by batteries catching fire. Why risk it? Take your phone to a mall repairer and have them install a new battery for peace of mind.

As Andrew mentioned, the charge controller  inside the phone disconnects the power coming from the charger when battery is fully charged (this information is coming from the battery microcontroller).

Coming from my personal experience with old phones and smartphones:

I have kept some old Nokia phones and Samsung smartphones connected day and night to their chargers for weeks.

All this time they were on, equipped with SIM and connected to the mobile network or WIFI.

I didn't notice any major changes on battery lifespan for months or even years.

As long as the charge controller is doing its job, I will not worry about.

I will be suspicious if I notice the phone heating during charging as long as the WIFI, MOBILE DATA or LOCATION are disabled or the device is in IDLE and/or FAST CHARGING is deactivated on the phone.

I'm no expert in Li-Ion battery, just sharing my long time experience using them.

What that Battery University article claims depends on various factors. A properly designed charging circuit does not continue trying to push charge into a fully charged battery. It is technically true that fully charged is more stressful for a battery, but then so too is running the battery down. A charge cycle is also a complete discharge and recharge, so it takes many small topping up charges to make up one charge cycle. So I think it is complicated and really not easy to determine what real world scenario actually works best.

Hi Marco, yes, a battery can become swollen during storage. The swelling is due to gas build up in a battery that is deteriorating. It’s possible your MacBook Pro battery had started to deteriorate - particularly given its age - prior to or during the repair period.

Surprisingly enough, Massachusetts STILL doesn't have an e-waste recycling law, even though people have been advocating for one – and various bills have been born and died in the state legislature – for more than a decade already. The only exceptions are landfill bans on CRT (tube) display screens, and on devices containing mercury. The second law would cover most older flat-screen displays, due to the fluorescent backlight. Newer, LED-backlit screens wouldn't even necessarily be prohibited under that law, so you can still just throw 'em out like yesterday's newspaper. (Actually, no - those you have to recycle!)

Of course, for anyone in MA who's left holding a swollen battery, that's BAD news because, even if you could apparently just chuck it in the trash, you for sure shouldn't. But, options for safe disposal are likely pretty limited, given the uncharacteristically permissive legal situation that somehow still persists in such a bastion of New England granola-liberalness... liberalhood... liberalty?

Please do not do this! If your battery is showing signs of damage to need to replace it. You do not want lithium ion battery to start fire in your pocket.

Unfortunately, the not-entirely-helpful answer is, "It depends". Most swelling is gradual and minor -- but as Arthur Shi says in a reply farther down, that's also not the type of swelling you have to worry about.

Catastrophic, major swelling (like you see in the photos accompanying this article) is the real danger. That sort of swelling can come on very quickly indeed, especially if it's caused by an event like a device drop, or exposure to water or excessive heat. By "very quickly" I mean in a matter of hours or days, up to perhaps a week or two.

In those cases, generally a battery inspection won't be your first indication of it happening — you'll see a sign like the ones described in the article: deforming of the outer casing, changes in the feel of buttons, keys, or trackpads, etc.

The first sort of swelling won't necessarily ever develop into the second, nor is it a prerequisite for severe swelling to develop. So, regular battery inspections probably aren't really all that useful, TBH.

The real concern is when there's a situation that might cause you to miss those secondary battery-swelling warning signs. In those instances, inspections for signs of swelling may be warranted. They don't even need to necessarily go as far as inspecting the battery itself.

For example, I had a Samsung Galaxy Note8 that developed severe battery swelling. Because I had the phone in a rubberized wraparound case, that case hid the signs of swelling so well that I didn't notice anything amiss until the swelling had already gotten way out of hand.

How out of hand? The swollen battery pushed the (glued-on!) back cover of the phone completely off, breaking the phone's rear camera in the process!

So, in situations like that, popping the phone out of the case every few weeks and checking it for signs of swelling is something I'd recommend, more than worrying about inspecting the battery itself.

Well, you shouldn't wish that your wife didn't witness it. Your children are supposed to think you're capable of anything and everything, but it's okay for our spouses to know our limitations and embarrassments. Your "rep" shouldn't mean anywhere near as much as sharing.

If you don't charge or energize the battery, the swollen battery probably won't explode. Don't use the battery—it's irreversibly damaged. The battery electrolyte has partially decomposed into gas.

Hi Fivan!

The battery swelling is a result of the battery electrolyte decomposing into gas. Very minor swelling is OK—you'd just experience decreased battery capacity. But, if the battery's pushing the screen up...it's time stop using it. Batteries inevitably wear out. Take a look at this guide and see if you want to try to replace the battery yourself.

"A bit" of swelling isn't unusual as batteries age, and isn't necessarily a cause for alarm. The thing to watch out for is severe swelling (bad enough to potentially deform the case / surrounding components), or swelling that occurs suddenly and/or in response to some outside event — if the device got wet, or was dropped, that sort of thing.

The OS is unlikely to ever notice anything amiss, even for severe swelling. The battery's performance typically isn't affected until (that is to say, if) it goes nuclear. Meltdowns aren't guaranteed, either, they're just a very real danger and can happen with little to no warning. So it really is a risk continuing to use a device with a (severely) swollen battery. Plenty of people still take that risk, and statistically most of them won't end up having any problems... but enough people DO that it really can't be considered safe.

If your laptop's using the original 2012 battery, it's probably just dying of old age.... totally unrelated to any swelling.

(Actually, if you have a battery from 2012 that still holds any charge, then it is a miracle device that lasted far longer than anyone could've ever expected it to. Heck if the battery's from any year before 2016, that's %#*@ impressive.)

There's no easy way, you do basically have to just run the battery down through use. Sometimes, you can use software that taxes the system, and drains the battery faster — things like benchmarks, graphics demonstrations, etc. that just naturally consume a lot of battery power — and that can speed the process along. But for the most part, the answer is simply, "just keep using the device without charging it until it runs out of power."

Best Buy definitely does offer electronics recycling, and for the most part free of charge — there are certain exceptions, like LCD screens (which they charge a hefty recycling fee for). Most of their locations have a battery drop-off bin right at the entrance, in fact. (Other electronics recycling, you have to go to the customer service desk to drop off your items. There's also a limit of like 3/day, IIRC.)

However, all that being said, I don't know what their policy is about taking swollen batteries, and I would check with them on that before going in. Definitely don't just drop it into the battery bin, that doesn't sound safe at all.

(1/2) I doubt it's entirely fair to blame Apple for this; they may not have even been the first manufacturer to use a non-removable battery pack. They were certainly the first biggest company to make that switch, but plenty of others did the same, and in some cases way too quickly for it to have been a case of them "copying" Apple. They simply came to the same conclusion: Removable batteries, like physical keyboards, hurt sales more than they helped. So, out they went.

Because, the frustration of it is that device manufacturers genuinely have really "good" reasons why batteries are no longer removable. Actually, at least two good reasons: Water-resistance and miniaturization.

Today's phones are surprisingly watertight, to the point where many can survive a brief dunk with no immediate ill effects. (Though I personally suspect that water infiltration is a trigger for subsequent battery swelling.) My Galaxy Note8 once survived a complete submersion lasting 2-3 seconds. Don't try that with your Nokia 3310!

(2/2) All battery-powered devices are also continually getting smaller and smaller. (Or, failing that, they're packing more and more stuff into roughly the same amount of space.) And the fact is, removable batteries require MUCH more space than non-removable.

If a battery is removable, it has to have an outer, protective case of its own due to the dangerous chemicals inside. The phone would then also have to have mechanisms to align and secure the battery, a latch and release mechanism, and electrical contacts between what are now (effectively) two completely separate devices. That all takes up space.

A removable battery makes a device significantly larger (in particular, thicker), or else it has half the capacity of the non-removable design. Either way, 999 out of 1000 consumers will choose the smaller, thinner, lighter fixed-battery device with twice the runtime between charges, over a bigger, thicker, doesn't-last-as-long alternative with a removable battery.

Actually, now that I think about it there's a third reason that's even more damning:

Removable batteries were never about extending device lifetime.

Manufacturers will tell you, and they can provide reams of consumer data to back it up: The percentage of consumers who keep a device long enough to wear out the first battery is TINY. Laughably tiny. The overwhelming majority of mobile-device owners want to replace their device with a newer, faster one every 2 years or less — long before the battery is even starting to degrade. (After all, until very recently the technology was advancing so quickly, a 2-year-old phone was nigh-unusable, given its limitations compared to newer models.)

Removable batteries were always intended for power-users who needed more runtime than they could get from a single battery. They'd own two+, and swap them out as needed (charging externally). In the end, rapid charging, larger capacities, and improved power-management software provided a better solution to that problem.

I have now removed the dud iFixit battery from my laptop and run it without one installed seeing as the machine doesn't go anywhere anyway. It is only used as a coffee table DVD player. So no, I don't think I trust iFixit batteries anymore. 3 strikes, and you're out!

Sad thing is I threw out the original battery which still worked for 2 or 3 hours. No swelling whatsoever after 10 years of solid use.

It isn't? Then what is this comments section for? But ok, what to do with a swollen battery? Don't get one from iFixit and you won't have the problem of wondering what to do with it. Maybe some iFixit employees want to keep an eye in here to see what ex customers think of their products. Anyhow....

Yea, I guess I was just unlucky as a majority of iFixit batteries don't do this? Either way, I don't think I care to take this further as even though this particular battery was hardly used, it was over 3 years old so I would think the warranty is over anyway, and I have since got rid of the evidence, I really don't need any fire-starters lying around. Also, I don't actually need a battery anymore in this machine as it is now only used as a coffee table DVD player.

On the other hand, maybe this is happening more than anyone cares to admit. I have some old cell phones from the 1990's, and while the batteries don't work at full capacity anymore, they do still work a bit, but most importantly, they are not swollen, at all. Of all the Li-Ion batteries I've ever handled, iFixit laptop batteries are the only ones that have done this.

No, I'm not fishing for any kind of compensation or the like, but hopefully this prompts better quality control going forward. Imagine aircraft or even electric car batteries did this...

All I can do is guess why that might be the case, but there are some factors that seem likely to be contributors:

• Much, much higher power draws. Modern mobile devices are hard on their batteries, running them hotter and draining them faster than devices ever did in the past. There's gotta be a reason the other big epidemic of battery failure was with "hoverboards", which also have insanely high power consumption.

• Internal, non-removable batteries' "soft" shells are poorer protection from the environment. Your typical Nokia 3310 had a 900-1000mAh battery (!!), encased in a hard plastic shell of its own, and its connection to the phone consisted of a few flat metal pads. It didn't get hot (even if the phone did), it didn't get wet (ditto), its chemistry wasn't subject to being screwed up by exposure to the elements.

• Fast-charging systems likely tax batteries more than older, slower chargers. Being "designed" to accept higher charging currents doesn't mean there isn't longer-term damage being done.

Lieber James, leider bin ich nicht in der Lage deinen Beitrag zu lesen. Versuchs doch mal mit Englisch ;-P