Isn't it an inherent problem with phones that if they are left on charge forever that their battery will explode? I've had test devices that I left connected for months together and inevitably the battery has exploded on every single one of them.
Perhaps, it can be hooked up to a smart plug and charged up whenever battery goes down below a certain percentage and shut it off when it's full.
> Isn't it an inherent problem with phones that if they are left on charge forever that their battery will explode?
Not necessarily, it depends on how much care went into making the phone.
Ever since Samsung had the unfortunate experience of having every airline announce that their phone wasn’t allowed on board (even when switched off), battery management has received as much attention as is possible. Most implementations today have multiple fail safes in place to prevent the chances of a battery exploding.
Today, several extremely improbable events must happen in a row to make a battery explode from just being connected to a charger 24x7.
Source: Implemented battery charging on a different Lithium Ion battery bearing consumer product.
Do a lot of phones have faulty charge termination circuits or something? I can't see any logical reason for this. Plenty of people leave laptops plugged in constantly for months without that happening.
That’s basically what I did for a android tablet mounted to a wall for home assistant control panel. Had a shelly smart plug that could be controlled via a simple http get request. I used tasker to monitor the charge state. When it reached specific state value, it would then make an http request to the shelly plug to turn off. Same when battery level dropped below a certain percentage.
Just watch out for battery degradation, at some point the % shown will not mean anything.
Even at 100% the battery won't be able to give enough power to even stay ON unless plugged in all the time. This is why we need removable and easily replaceable batteries as most devices are 2-3 years of regular use will have a degraded battery.
Yes - you're absolutely right. Eventually I'm going to see degradation in capacity. Fortunately, the tablet is a Amazon fire 10 tablet (rooted) and relatively cheap to replace. I paid $100 for it 3 years ago.
Lenovo's tablets are designed to be aware of this - after they've been plugged in for extra long (afaik 24H) they switch to battery-protector mode where they hover from 40%-60%. Hopefully somebody could steal this feature and add it to LineageOS or something. Edit: apparently you can do this on stock android with root[1]
Yeah, this is a concern for me too. I'd be more comfortable if I could replace the batteries in repurposed Android devices with a dummy passthrough that pulls power straight from USB-C.
Becoming a spicy pillow is the inevitable fate of almost all small lithium electronics batteries. Keeping them in the 60-80% range will slightly help extend life, but that's about it, unfortunately.
For fully stationary use, you could replace the battery with a voltage regulator + supercap combo like in this video: https://youtu.be/YfvTjQ9MCwY?t=856
This ensures that the phone does not get confused when powered straight from the adapter with the battery removed (provided it is even possible to do so).
Not necessarily; laying aside the issue of whether the battery is even removable, a lot of devices expect to be able to lean on the battery for temporary spikes in power consumption. I don't specifically know that this affects phones, but I'd be surprised if it didn't
yes, and typically at the very least a protection circuit that needs to be implemented or faked, or whatever.
i replaced a swollen battery on a cheapo hotspot with an 18650, but i had to remove the protection chip from the old battery and wire that up with my battery holder. if i was more industrious/desperate i probably could have used the one in the 18650, but that was more fiddling than i wanted
one way to defeat this problem is to connect the charger to a timer plug so that the charger can turn off at night. I use this approach to keep some lesser-used laptops connected and charged (edited) without so far running into the spicy pillow problem.
I and an acquaintance got identical Onn i3/4gb laptops (clearanced for 100usd). They left theirs plugged in constantly while I used the mechanism above. Three months later, theirs was suffering from spicy pillow, bad enough to rip the screw holders for the case, while mine is ok so far. I think the mechanism above is reasonable for shady hardware like the Onn laptop but I hope your Lenovo might do better.
Perhaps, it can be hooked up to a smart plug and charged up whenever battery goes down below a certain percentage and shut it off when it's full.