Photo of Terence Eden. He has a beard and is smiling.

New Batteries Make Everything Better

· 4 comments · 400 words · read ~273 times.

It has been 4 years since I got my OnePlus 5T. For a mobile geek like me, that's unbearably long! In recent months, the phone has become temperamental and the battery barely made it through the day without a couple of charges. Using the OnePlus Diagnostic Tool, I could see that battery health had fallen below 50%.

New batteries cost around £15 on eBay - and come with the tools needed to disassemble the device. But, in recent years, I've become wary about fiddling with delicate electronics. If I broke it, that'd be an expensive trip to the upgrade store. So I found one of those local "we fix any phone" places. They offered to replace the battery for £30. Paying an extra £15 to let someone experienced do the hard work seemed like a fair deal.

I factory reset the phone0 and handed it over. A couple of hours later, I took it back. How did the new battery perform? Over 28 hours of battery life - and 8 hours of screen time!

It's like having a brand new phone.

One of the reasons I got out of the mobile industry was because I thought it had reached a local plateau. There's a limit to how high a resolution a screen needs. Clusters of megapixel cameras are pointless for most people. High-def stereo audio isn't going to get magically better. Biometrics are a solved problem. 5G isn't magic - just a bit faster. Flexible screens are gorgeous - but flip-phones feel a bit retro to me.

And batteries? Any advance in battery tech is quickly eaten by background apps, bright screens, and power-hungry network communications.

There's nothing a 2021 model can do that my 2017 model can't1.

Reduce. Reuse. Repair. Recycle.

So that's where I am. After repairing this device, I don't see a pressing need to upgrade. It'll probably be another year before I get the gadget lust again.

  1. For both security and to wipe off any lingering apps still draining the battery. ↩︎

  2. Fight me in the comments. ↩︎

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4 thoughts on “New Batteries Make Everything Better”

  2. DinoNerd says:

    re your note 02 - I can't fight you; I'm too busy agreeing. I haven't seen a cell phone innovation that I cared about (except negatively) in approximately forever. Well, except for the Planet Gemini, which features an excellent physical keyboard. And possibly the Pine Phone, which features physical switches to turn off various potential avenues for privacy invasion. Note that what those two have in common is that they don't come from major cell phone manufacturers, and are anything other than fashionable. Both are also strictly early adopter gadgts, plagued with bugs, some of them major.
    Reply

  3. said on twitter.com:

    The Fairphone is designed to let you replace most of the parts, and it's easy to do. Doesn't look as swish as some of the other phones and it's not particularly good value for money initially, but I think it pays off in the long run (also reduces e-waste).
    Reply | Reply to original comment on twitter.com

  4. Eric says:

    If it wasn't for the planned obsolescence for any new phones and the personal risk in trying to repair them, I too would still have the same phone I did 3 years ago. But it wasn't supported any more (by Google) and the charging port broke. I was able to send the replacement phone back to the manufacturer when its battery started to swell and they replaced it (still under warranty). It just took 2 weeks to get it back (FedEx delivered it to the wrong address).
    Reply

What links here from around this blog?

  1. Screenshot of the Android Version screen. What doesn't work in LineageOS 20
  2. An old Blackberry phone with a smashed screen. All phones are foldable. But some are foldable only once.

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