Hi folks,
In the last week I have received 2 Fairphone 3 batteries which were swollen and stopped working well. They are of course out of warranty and I’ve counseled the owners to get a new battery, but I must say that I’ve never ever seen a swollen phone battery and I thought this was a rare and dangerous occurrence.
Care to share your own perspective? Anyone else encountered swollen batteries?
Uh-oh. Get rid of them, sell the house you were in and run as fast and as far as you can!
(Just kidding! 
)
I have seen them before. AFAIK they are indeed dangerous, but it doesn’t mean they will explode in a flaming inferno any minute now. I kept using my swollen Samsung battery for several months until I could get a new one (it was back then when they were still replaceable). That doesn’t mean it can’t go up in flames, it’s just a question of “Do I feel lucky?”…
I also had a tablet battery which started to swell after a couple years. Unfortunately glued in.
TL;DR: It’s actually pretty common, and indeed it means it’s high time you get rid of them before they do something unpleasant.
The battery of my Fairphone 1 got swollen.
2 batteries in my home-phone got swollen.
And the mobile of my neighbour worked bad and I discovered a swollen battery.
They kept using the mobile. Only after I spoke insistently to them a few days later that they were risking fire and thus creating a danger to the building did they want to stop using the mobile.
I have had several batteries over the years with this problem (Nokia 3100, Blackberry storm, HTC 826) . My Fairphone 3 battery did the same in March 2022.
My sister had an iPhone 4 and that was the most destructive. It smashed its way out through the screen!
I read that the best thing to do with a swollen battery is to discharge it then dispose of it in a battery recycle point, so that’s what I did.
There a some examples discussed
https://forum.fairphone.com/search?q=Swollen%20Battery
And an ifixit article
The IPhone battery of a friend caught fire whennhe tried to remove it to replace it, dont know if it was swollen at least to remove it with the glue wasnt helpful…
Indeed, because you un-glue it using a heat gun, and getting hot can trigger the already damaged battery… 
You definitely need to replace those batteries, they are beginning to fail, these batteries may not hold energy when fully charged and not work at all very soon, these batteries may be old stock.
DISCHARGE as good as possible and replace; dispose old ones properly (recycling).
Other than that: Yeah, had 3 FP3 and about 4 batteries and 3 of those 4 were slightly swollen but held the nominal charge, so I never bothered.
I have seen worse with other brands, eg Samsung gets badly swollen when they reach end of life. Not sure if that is a rule but all my failing Sumsangs did swell but then you never get an original sumsang battery (90% fakes or shaky rebuilts), do you?
Fun fact: Now that I think of all my batteries… my replacements from Polar Cell did never swell.
Just to add (from a FP point of view), I have 2x FP3 batteries and both are fine 
But, I’ve also seen some scary laptop batteries expanding too… always remove as soon as you see them and don’t just leave it until “tomorrow”
My FP3 battery swollened when the phone was 3 years old, replaced and the new one is still fine.