Samsung phone battery issue, older models? hot, fire! (1.2)

[Quackers101]

Summary

As with how the issue was around when note 7 had battery issues? It seems like there might be some hardware + software issues in older samsung models that makes the battery faulty or degrade a lot worse. As in old phones, more around the note 7 era and a bit more recent. So maybe not as old models (which likely doesn't have as big or violent batteries in them). Where some tech channels and others noted that older than s20 models had some kind of battery issue (but it seems more recent ones could have it too), which can be really serious. Its unclear what to do for now, than to be aware of older models, maybe from 2019 and older. Its not sure if this is related to anything else in production or just these phones. Also how reliable are other brands around this?

 

Its not as explosive, but the batteries do expand to a dangerous level that can be an fire hazard. Where one can see a lot of phones bend in 2 parts instead of the fire ball from note 7 phones, ofc one are not guaranteed it will be safe when it happens or how one handles the battery. Samsung saw some of the tweets made by mrwhosetheboss around the battery issue, and likely wanted it to not blow as hard, as for taking the phones back for investiagtion on the issue.

 

Quotes

Quote

- details to come, or to update thread -

 

My thoughts

As with lithium batteries, its serious business and more so if millions of devices can become fire hazards. some lithium batteries will have defects too, as they can be quite unstable, and by certain ratio and mixture going into the battery.

Do wonder if this can also be related to produced content or samsung software. But it seems like it might be the samsung batteries that is the issue, and we can see more batteries like that if they try to push the limit in "higher capacity" lithium batteries and is more unstable.

Sources

[Fasterthannothing]

Honestly this is stupid batteries aren't meant to last years and years and complaining about a 7 year old battery puffing up is absurd. As someone who worked with high output lithium cells decades before they were even in people's cellphones I can tell you no matter how good they are built they don't last forever. The longer you keep them the more chances of them becoming dangerous. 

[Imbadatnames]

19 minutes ago, Fasterthannothing said:

Honestly this is stupid batteries aren't meant to last years and years and complaining about a 7 year old battery puffing up is absurd. As someone who worked with high output lithium cells decades before they were even in people's cellphones I can tell you no matter how good they are built they don't last forever. The longer you keep them the more chances of them becoming dangerous. 

If you watch the video ones from 2019 are doing it Including the Fold 2

[Quackers101]

17 minutes ago, Fasterthannothing said:

Honestly this is stupid batteries aren't meant to last years and years and complaining about a 7 year old battery puffing up is absurd. As someone who worked with high output lithium cells decades before they were even in people's cellphones I can tell you no matter how good they are built they don't last forever. The longer you keep them the more chances of them becoming dangerous. 

sure, in some production for these batteries. they have daily fires due to how unstable they can be, more so when they have to solder onto the battery etc.

but this is not years, but being much less reliable than assumingly a lot of other brands. where you got much less time before failure. As mentioned in the video and from others, some of these phones are 2-3 years old or nearly not used at all. Not able to hold longer than other brands they have and towards the 5 years it has been labelled as.

[Fasterthannothing]

11 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

If you watch the video ones from 2019 are doing it Including the Fold 2

2019 is almost 3 years old... If you constantly charge and discharge a battery especially in high heat scenarios (like charging while using a phone that's sitting in your car with the sun right on it) you can ruin a battery in a year. I'm not saying they can't do better but immediately jumping to the conclusion that's it's something Samsung did and not due to age and lifecycle wear is just clickbate 

[tim0901]

6 minutes ago, Fasterthannothing said:

2019 is almost 5 years old...

I know the pandemic felt like it went on for an age and a half, but 2019 was only 3 years ago bud, not 5.

[Fasterthannothing]

1 minute ago, tim0901 said:

I know the pandemic felt like it went on for an age and a half, but 2019 was only 3 years ago bud, not 5.

Oof my math lol ok I stand corrected 3 years is too new 

[suicidalfranco]

33 minutes ago, Fasterthannothing said:

Honestly this is stupid batteries aren't meant to last years and years and complaining about a 7 year old battery puffing up is absurd. As someone who worked with high output lithium cells decades before they were even in people's cellphones I can tell you no matter how good they are built they don't last forever. The longer you keep them the more chances of them becoming dangerous. 

There was a simple solution to this but people decided it was an old way of doing things, and as seen many times in this forum: old = bad.

User replaceable batteries.

[Gamer Schnitzel]

I am so glad I refunded my £1324 Galaxy S22 Ultra and went with a £342 Pixel 6. Samsung used to be an exciting brand 20 years ago but now they are just disappointing and boring. They are trying so hard to be like Apple but without the top notch processor you get in iPhones.

[Ydfhlx]

4 hours ago, Fasterthannothing said:

Honestly this is stupid batteries aren't meant to last years and years and complaining about a 7 year old battery puffing up is absurd.

S20FE also had this problem... And it's two years old. Delivered 18 months ago. And it's battery is rated for 5 years. Not to mention that Samsung now gives longer software updates.

 

Also, most of the phones, if not almost all, were just sitting on the shelves. I believe it was said in the video that the Fold 2 was used for 3 weeks.

[Shimejii]

Well inb4 All samsung devices are banned from airlines and other mass transit stuff again from note 7 fun. Honestly interested to see just why their battery division hasnt said much since this isnt a new issue, its been an issue on most of their phones. Would be interesting to see if its only an issue with the first batches of their phones, as i imagine the first few runs and the latter runs for battery chem are slightly  different for things they learn and go oop gotta fix that.

[Dracarris]

4 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

User replaceable batteries.

Well they are. There are very well-documented guides on ifixit.com. And they even sell you parts and tools. Number of phones so far I had to throw away because of dead batteries: 0

[suicidalfranco]

1 minute ago, Dracarris said:

Well they are. There are very well-documented guides on ifixit.com. And they even sell you parts and tools. Number of phones so far I had to throw away because of dead batteries: 0

why would i need a guide to pop out a cover, pull out a battery, and place a new one. no tool required. no counting screws around, and can be done on the go in less then a minute to top the phone back at 100%, no power bank required, no wire to fiddle with in a backpack

Oh right i forgot, im old and therefore bad. Keep being advanced and way forward over me, i'll stick to my mean ol' ways cause i ain't interested in what you got to offer me

[jsz]

1 hour ago, suicidalfranco said:

why would i need a guide to pop out a cover, pull out a battery, and place a new one. no tool required. no counting screws around, and can be done on the go in less then a minute to top the phone back at 100%, no power bank required, no wire to fiddle with in a backpack

Oh right i forgot, im old and therefore bad. Keep being advanced and way forward over me, i'll stick to my mean ol' ways cause i ain't interested in what you got to offer me

compromises water and dust protection 

[suicidalfranco]

6 hours ago, jsz said:

compromises water and dust protection 

Don't need em, and I'm more than sure Samsung made a phone that was still dust and water resistant without glueing in the battery

[Imbadatnames]

13 hours ago, Fasterthannothing said:

2019 is almost 3 years old... If you constantly charge and discharge a battery especially in high heat scenarios (like charging while using a phone that's sitting in your car with the sun right on it) you can ruin a battery in a year. I'm not saying they can't do better but immediately jumping to the conclusion that's it's something Samsung did and not due to age and lifecycle wear is just clickbate 

I’ve had iPhones since the 3GS and never had this issue. Hell I still have my 3GS which is 13 years old at this point and hasn’t done this. 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Welp so far my Galaxy A5 2017 that's been sitting around barely used for about 3 years hasn't popped its rear glass out. Similarly my Galaxy S3 with it's original battery still hasn't shown any signs of expansion. Galaxy Q? Nada. Samsung Corby Plus, nope. I think I'm fine... at least for now...

[mr moose]

Yay! another shit company giving us a shit battery experience.  And to make it worse we get to have the consumer rights denialist's defend their actions once again.

 

[Doobeedoo]

That sucks. I'm using S6 not swole though. Battery health is 2/3 sadly. That's like less than 1000Mah unfortunatley.

Hopefully it lasts a bit longer before I buy a new one.

 

Now before this showed up lately, I was really wondering, aside from some other well known brands, when will Samsung increase charging speeds. I get the old Note fire hazzard issue but thar was long time ago. Samsung SDI makes their batteries. We know they changed stuff from that incident though not sure what causes this stored swelling. But yeah with this issue now doubt it will have faster charging any time soon. Literally every other asian OEM does. I hope they resolve these issues soon enough and can also offer some solid fast charging.

[Quackers101]

just wanted to repost this comment, from source above

as in "an higher voltage lithium battery vs others" and more claiming the issues for fold 2.

(so, some other brands might use similar and have a similar issue, like the mentioned phones with battery issues behind samsung)

but its sad if true it being mostly the issue and samsung not learned from their note 7 days.

 

- Dogukan Çil

Quote

Lithium batteries are usually not particularly happy about being in a state of high voltage. This is especially true for high voltage lithium batteries that charge up to 4.4 volts. If you kept them on a charger for extended periods of time, or if you shut them off at 100% and left them in that state for long periods of time, battery swelling over time is expected. This is well-known in DIY drone or RC hobbyist communities.

 

As to why this is happening only for Samsung, I have checked up to Galaxy S10 and all of them use high voltage lithium batteries that charge from 3.85 to 4.4 volts. This is done to increase the capacity of the package per unit of volume. The changes that need to be made to accommodate a higher charge compared to regular Lithium ion batteries(3.7-4.2v) make the package more reactive and prone to swelling. Most batteries lose enough capacity in about 4 years that they become useless. They basically did not plan for more than that. While regular batteries just develop high resistance over time, the high voltage batteries swell from gas build-up.

Edited September 28, 2022 by Quackers101

[Dracarris]

40 minutes ago, Quackers101 said:

As to why this is happening only for Samsung, I have checked up to Galaxy S10 and all of them use high voltage lithium batteries that charge from 3.85 to 4.4 volts. This is done to increase the capacity of the package per unit of volume.

And even with these hacks and humongously large batteries, these phones still get inferior battery life when compared to competing phones.

I'll stick with my philosophy, which includes not buying anything from Samsung.

[RedRound2]

On 9/27/2022 at 10:45 PM, Fasterthannothing said:

2019 is almost 3 years old... If you constantly charge and discharge a battery especially in high heat scenarios (like charging while using a phone that's sitting in your car with the sun right on it) you can ruin a battery in a year. I'm not saying they can't do better but immediately jumping to the conclusion that's it's something Samsung did and not due to age and lifecycle wear is just clickbate 

You clearly didn't see the video. These phones were sitting indoors in a shelf. Never went through much battery cycles and wasn't exposed to direct sunlight - and moreover the batteries were rated for for 5 years at least.

Also, this is dangerous because a lot of people, including me, keep my old phones as a backup for years and if it were a Samsung phone, I would've had to discard it.

This isn't a problem with pretty much any other brand, so making excuses especially for something that has the potential to burn down a house is not a great thing to do.

 

It's really not a clickbait and what he did present as his findings in the video are pretty remarkable. And other creators corroborated the same. Again, please watch the video. It is pretty damning evidence against solely Samsung devices

 

As for my view on this issue - I thought Samsung had an 8-point battery check after the Note 7 fiasco. Sort of disappointed that they did not keep around old phones to test the integrity of their battery chemistry. Honestly if they did, they could've fixed this issue without anyone knowing and avoided a second bad PR over Samsung batteries

[TetraSky]

Huh, weird. Do we know if it mostly affect the flagships or also their midrange A series as well?

[Gamer Schnitzel]

I'm definitely not buying another Samsung phone until they go back to flat screens again which won't be long since they're evening out their curved edge a little more every release. The S24 or S25 will most likely be flat again but even then they clearly don't care about innovation anymore. Those Chinese brands are also selling premium phones now with much of the same tech as the Samsung flagships but for less and even the same processor. I have a good feeling Samsung's profit will take a big hit in the coming  years as more normies realize this. With Apple you can always argue that you're getting the best mobile processor in the industry.

[Quackers101]

15 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

Huh, weird. Do we know if it mostly affect the flagships or also their midrange A series as well?

if its mostly the battery, it would be most if not all samsung related and their batteries. But not sure what type etc.

At least don't sleep with your samsung phone in your bed night surprises are so much fun, more so if your phone is any of the related products and mostly be more aware of the added risk.

Edited September 28, 2022 by Quackers101