Can Battery Fake Their Manufacture

Jingtian Wang · April 8, 2020

This is a follow up question from another post of mine about laptop battery replacements:

Long story short, I'm trying to figure out if the third party battery I buy is safe to sue in my laptop. This price of the unit I found seemed right, about 60 euros. And it claims to be made by the OEM. But now days you can never to sure.

One thing I did find out is that you can generate a battery report using powershell and it would tell you the manufacturer of the cell. So my idea would be simply do that when I put in the new battery and if it's from a reputable manufacturer, it's probably safe?

But after I've seen how ppl can change the displayed capacity storage devices, I'm wondering if the same can be done with batteries? Like telling a no name manufacturer's cell to display Samsung or Panasonic?

PineyCreek · April 8, 2020

Super easy I believe...it's just reading an identifier I would think, baked into one of the chips. Doubt they would put extra encryption and check mechanisms on such a thing....unless maybe Apple was involved.

That said, the price doesn't sound really outside the realm of possibility, and you're often guaranteed a lower price NOT buying from the OEM on batteries, even on OEM parts. Or it could be a clever refurbishment. I wouldn't buy it without the guaranteed full OEM warranty if you're expecting an OEM battery though. The OEM might also say they won't honor a warranty if you buy an OEM part from an unauthorized distributor.

Eigenvektor · April 8, 2020

9 minutes ago, Jingtian Wang said:

But after I've seen how ppl can change the displayed capacity storage devices, I'm wondering if the same can be done with batteries? Like telling a no name manufacturer's cell to display Samsung or Panasonic?

Sure, the same way people sell fake GPUs, SSDs and USB-Sticks. The information you see is a simple string returned by some firmware chip that you can replace/modify. This way you could make the battery report any manufacturer or capacity you want. It does take some effort, since you most likely need to replace the chip (should be read only) but it's profitable if you do it en masse.