My battery is starting to bloat as well since a few weeks.
Andreas
I also have a swollen battery, and the support team are helping with this. From the looks of the other pictures I think I caught mine before it got too bad!
I am worried about this issue though as there seem to be a few of us with swollen batteries at the same time. How quickly does this sort of damage happen? Is this something that would have happened over the ten months I have had the phone, or could it be more recent damage? Will a replacement battery be okay, or will it fail again?
Hello
I was also worried and curious about this topic.
To let the people use their own chargers is in theory a good idea, but in practice only a minority of the chargers do their job in the specified limits.
I have modified a charger cable to connect a Volt- and Ampere-Meter and asked then friends and family if I could use their charger to charge my (old HTC) phone.
After measuring more than 20 diffrerent chargers (included car-chargers) I am a bit shocked and glad that I made these tests with my old phone.
And I am surprised that there are not more bloated Fairphone-Batterys.
@ Fairphone-Team:
I think using a Fairphone-Charger would be better for the environment than to waste stressed Batterys with too aggressive chargers.
Best regards
Bobby
After theses tests some people asked me how is the much safest (healthiest for the Battery) way tho charge a Fairphone without the Fairphone-Charger http://shop.fairphone.com/catalog/category/view/id/9.
IMHO I propose to charge it on a PC / Laptop using a USB2-Port.
USB3 can charge faster, but some powerful ports (for USB-Harddisks) can overcharge the Fairphone and overcharging it frequently can bloat the Battery…
Best regards
Bobby
@Bobby: I do not agree with you. If an USB3.0-Port CAN deliver more than 1A current, it does not mean that the battery or even the FP sees this high current. The Port should only deliver that current, which will be used/consumed/requested from the device.
And if the FP is designed to use more than it can handle it would be a really big problem - and therefore I don’t think it is like this.
Any comments?
@Chris_R @anon90052001:
Because I saw now some bloated batteries in the last days, maybe we should merge the different posts and maybe create a pinned topic or even a poll, how many batteries/FPs are affected and under which circumstances it occured…?
It is a quite serious problem, if a lot of FP (or all?) will be affected sooner or later…
Hope the best,
Robert
Hi all, thanks all for your reports about the bloated batteries and I am really sorry we are seeing some of these issues.
If you have a bloated battery:
- Please stop using it immediately and remove it from your Fairphone
- Contact us (customer support), please use “bloated battery” in your subject line so we can recognise your issue in the swiftest way possible
- Customer support will get back to you and arrange a replacement battery for you asap.
For now the best way is to contact us, so we can collect all the feedback and work with our product department on figuring out a possible cause and/or solution.
Thanks!
4 Likes
Hi all.
Today I finally received my new battery. Thanks. It took 21 days from the time I logged the support case. There is room for improvement. Also check your delivery partner GLS - it took 7 days for the shipment alone. The battery spent 3 full days in a Belgian warehouse…
To all other ones: as in all technology products also batteries have faults. 1-3% of all produced batteries are or will get faulty. With 25k FP sold thats between 250 and 750 faulty batteries. This is normal and not FP fault.
IMHO the charger should not make a difference. Stronger chargers will charge the battery quicker and maybe the lifetime of the battery shortens a little but it should not overcharge the battery at all. Maybe you really can lengthen the lifetime of a battery if you keep the charge between 30% and 85% as suggested in another thread. I will try this. Also make sure the battery doesn’t get too hot. Maybe it is better to remove the phone from the protective case when charging? Would that make a difference because the phone is getting really warm when charging?
Thanks for the warranty battery. It works fine now.
IAP
5 Likes
I’ve got the same problem. Just written to the support. Unfortunately I can’t use my phone over christmas 
(And I used a wrong title). It’s really annoying to see so many problems with this terrible phone. But in half a year I#ll have a new, better phone and it won’t be the FP2…
I have the same problem too.
request #38351
I hope these are isolated incidents.
1 Like
Same problem, but I realised that the battery was bloated, just after having bought a new one (no time to lose and no money for buying any new phone). I wrote to the support team (request #38675) and now I’m waiting for an answer because I think I have the right to be refused. Here some pictures. 
I have the exact same issue, not only is the battery bloated it is also highly inaccurate when in use. the battery can last a day, but it can also be fully consumed by early afternoon, when used equally on both days.
I presumed the bloated state makes it malfunction, so the bloated state is what needs to be fixed.
as to how it became bloated, i can’t say I started to notice sudden drops in battery life … as in, 15% left, then opening a link in a mail, start video playback for 4 seconds and phone powering off due to 0%.
then i noticed some issues with the back piece not being able to close well.
and thats when i started noticing the battery being thicker than it should be.
but can’t say which one was first.
Stop using a bloated battery! It is really dangerous because it can burst! 
3 Likes
I got exactely the same problem but only learned today that a bloated battery is dangerous - I have been using the bloated battery for some weeks now. I ordered a new battery today and now wrote an e-mail to the customer support. I hope my new battery will arrive very soon and hopefully all my problems will be solved …
2 Likes
I have been having exactly the same issues as Sander_Houttekier over the past couple of weeks - when I actually looked at my battery today, it is definitely bloated. I have now raised a ticket with Support.
I hope the new battery comes soon because I gave away my previous phone when I received my Fairphone.
2 days ago, I was talking to a friend of mine which bought the first batch Fairphone and suffers the “bloated battery problem” (I have a second batch one since last August and my battery seems still quite well) and we hypothesized this problem could be due to the first sw version with the “14% battery instant drain” problem, because it seems all the batteries bloated after about 10-11 months of use (his phone is about 11 months old).
Maybe we could investigate if all the bloating batteries were damaged by a wrong sw charging algorithm instead of being a bad production batch so we can circumscribe or prevent the problem?
Bye!
We were already talking about this over there.
What speaks against your theory is that the Fairphone Team keeps insisting that the calibration is correct.
Oh, didn’t read those threads…thank you for pointing me 
Bye!
1 Like
Just chiming in here with the latest bloated battery sob story, and an additional dilemma posed to me by Fairphone’s replacement policy.
A. My battery from my FP1 founders edition started bloating around 14 January (~1 year). The first symptoms were sudden battery charge swings and spontaneous power failures. A few days later, the physical deformity set in and the back cover is no longer flush with the phone body.
B. My charger is an original Sony USB charger, 5V, 1500mA, 0.2A, 11W - nothing terrible.
C. The Fairphone team took 5 days to respond to my initial email and then informed me that I was due for a free RMA/return, but that they could only ship to Europe. Unfortunately, I have since moved to Cambodia. If Fairphone doesn’t offer an alternative, it will likely have to be delivered to a friend, who will then have to ship it here, probably at the cost of a replacement battery, not to mention the 1 month delay and uncertainties of the Cambodian Post.
Please weigh in: do you think Fairphone owes me a direct shipping to Cambodia? Is it my fault for moving away for honorable work? Is 1-month (give or take, if all things go well) without my phone sufficient grounds to jump ship to a more reliable international company (and more interchangeable batteries), despite my support of their project?
I have a good story about this customer Support regarding “bloated battery”, too.: I did exactly what the Support recommended: I wrote to the Support that I have “bloated battery”. After 2 days, they wrote me if I can “prove” it, by sending photos or a movie. I did. 3 days after my request, they told me that “soon” they will send me a new battery. A day later, I got a tracking number for the new battery. Another 2 days later, I could track the battery as it “left GLS Location”… then, for one week (!!!), the battery didn’t make a move! I got back to customer Support and asked what the Problem with my battery is. 2 days later, the wrote me the following: “The battery has returned to us…I shall have my colleagues of the shipping department find out what has gone wrong and to see if it is quicker to send a new one”.!!! I’m sure that is what every good customer Support woud do! NOT trying to send a battery immediatly to the angry customer! Noooo, no. First, they will discuss what they should do. That is 3 days ago now. So I am still waiting for the decision, if they will send me the one battery or the other battery. Maybe they will get back to me, maybe not. Maybe they will send me a new battery, maybe not. And they don’t have a rush… THIS IS NOT CUSTOMER SUPPORT, THIS IS CUSTOMER PISS TAKE!! This is by far the most frustrating “Support”-experience in my whole life. If You ever needed a role model for bad customer Support, You will find it HERE! I wrote them that I no longer need a battery for the Fairphone, but they should give my money back. I dind’t get an answer since 3 days…
Hello @jan,
Really sorry to hear this. It does sound like a bad experience.
I understand now our support team has been in contact with you and the issue should be resolved quickly.
We’ll take your feedback to improve the process in the future. Apologies again.
Joe