🇬🇧 🇩🇪 Generic battery to replace FP1 battery (⚠️see first post for warning)

I guess there is no such thing as equivalence unless the battery is specifically produced for a phone model (we do need standardized smartphone batteries!)

Most important things, from my point of view:

  • correct output voltage (3,7/3,8V)
  • temperature monitoring works
  • dimensions of the battery

The capacity is not so important, but a higher capacity is of course preferred. (The Samsung batteries I mentioned above only have 1500mAh, and the current FP1 battery has 2100mAh.)

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I will receive one of those batteries tomorrow or on Wednesday and will report back. “Testing for thermal safety” will be done using the app DevCheck. At the moment it displays 27°C for my original FP1 battery, but it goes up to 39°C, when I use 3G and surf the internet for about half an hour. I will compare these values to the ones obtained with the generic HB5N1H battery.

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The FP1 was based on a existing phone design for reduce costs. So unless the was a redesign to the battery, there ought to be other phones out there that take the identical battery.

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Yup, this is mentioned four posts up in this topic. As far as I know, nobody has ever verified that those actually work (or that there were modifications for the FP1), and they don’t seem to be available any more either.

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Thank you for doing the good work not just for yourself, but for many others. :slight_smile:

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I have just tried out the batterie of Samsung Mini S3 in my FP1. It does not work, because the 3 Pins do not match exactly the 3 contacts of batterie! …And YES, the samsung batterie fits well into the FP1 back - fixed with two small matches and slightly pressed towards the contact pins. But the 3 larger pins of the FP1-case do not fit to the 3 closer contacts on the samsung batterie - no electrical contact!
BY THE WAY: For FP3 the Faiphone developers should simply just copy the measures and specifications of a common and suitable Huawei or Samsung batterie!! Because they are available much longer, as the chinese Fairphone producer could deliver it!

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Sorry, I didn’t get that the order confirmation was not a sending confirmation… I haven’t received a confirmation that the battery has been sent off, but the first email said that even after the sending confirmation, it would take about three working days until the battery arrives. I’ll be back home in the middle of next week. Let’s see if it has arrived by then… :laughing:

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Surprisingly and unexpectedly the battery already arrived today! :smiley: I placed it towards the left side and fixed it with a curled up cable tie. No grinding was necessary, but I removed a tiny little sticker inside the battery compartment (see below).

Below are some size comparison images and and the temperature measurements (they don’t work).

(This is the sticker I removed.)

No matter how hot the CPU and SOC are, the battery temperature doesn’t change. I therefore conclude that the temperature monitoring does not work.

The battery does its job well however, and it didn’t fail me in a 40 minutes phone talk that I just had. I will also try the charging at night and will report any weird behaviour.

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Thanks for all the good ideas!

I tried a original Huawei HB5N1H battery and can confirm that it worked. The original battery at least has a NTC103 type as thermistor between the middle terminal and the minus-terminal.

It went through the whole load-cycle without problems, temperature reading varied up to 36°C.

At room temperature the readings were slightly different, but NTCs are notoriously inaccurate.

Rumours have it that cheap 3rd-party batteries might have a constant 10kOhms resistor instead, which might lead to the battery catching fire, explode, you name it.

In case you want to use any replacement battery I would recommend to check that a NTC103 is installed. This can easily be done with a Ohm-Meter. The resistance between the middle terminal should be around 10kOhm at room temperature and the drop quickly if you warm-up the battery mildly (warm with your hand, place it in the sun or on some warm, not hot, surface).

I hope it doesn’t have to be mentioned here that using a lighter or other open flames are not a good idea.

If the resistance doesn’t significantly drop, don’t use it!

Hope this helps!

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Habe mich hier durch gelesen und bedanke mich bei den kreativen Köpfen - ja schade dass man jetzt auf solche Akkus zurück greifen muss und damit die Philosophie des FP1 versaut aber da ich auch ohne aktuelle Software gut mit meinem FP1 klar komme und nur den Zeitpunkt des Akku Kaufs verpasst habe - werde ich diese Lösung ausprobieren
Hoffe es geht gut
LG sabs

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Hi @Stefan & @Karsten_Benz,
thanks for testing this alternative solution and feedback :slight_smile:

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Interestingly the temperature reading goes down to 23°C when the phone heats up:

What do you make of that?

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Then it’s definitely not a NTC thermistor.

It might be a ‘constant’ resistor (carbon, metal) which have a slight positive temperature coefficient, which mean it will be read as a temperature drop by the phone.

Since the coefficient is quite small relative to the NTC, even a very hot battery could show as a lower temperature. But I didn’t do any math around this.

However: I would not use it, unless the phone is in a steel sink with nothing combustible around it :slight_smile:

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I use since today an original Huawei HB5N1H battery. Here is my test result. The battery works well. When charging, it was slightly warmer (40 °) but then cooled to 36 °. During the loading process I copied many data over the network and by the way phoned. No problem!
:slight_smile:

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Does this battery fit very well in terms of thickness? Above it was stated that it is 5,6mm, which is 1,1 mm more than the original one. This may be a major disadvantage if the battery sooner or later tends to expand a bit…

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See for yourself. The batteries are very similar in thickness.

Original FP1 battery on the right side.

Stefan: could you make sure that Daniel4 / Pippi etc in forum Fairphone1 maintenance -end, see this discussion and options and try to find some possible way to investigate an acceptable alternative for FP1 batteries, even as suggested have the FP1 users pre-order batteries to help with the financing. I know the the FP1 community would greatly appreciate this, as it better reflects the ideals/vision of sustainability of Fairphone. (also there appears to be some bad feelings/impressions of some users vs. Fairphone internal people, that is not justified and could be improved)

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You can mention others by adding “@” before their names: @anon99326380 @Pippi

Links help others to see the context. For reference, @bxl_11 means this thread. I completely understand Fairphone’s point of view on this, as @anon99326380 explains it:

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Yes, but it is saver if there is some space for the battery to expand, although these batteries for the FP1 are relatively weak.

Remember the problems Samsung created:
“When batteries are charged and discharged, chemical processes cause the lithium to migrate and the battery will mechanically swell. Any battery engineer will tell you that it’s necessary to leave some percentage of ceiling above the battery, 10% is a rough rule-of-thumb, and over time the battery will expand into that space. Our two-month old unit had no ceiling: the battery and adhesive was 5.2 mm thick, resting in a 5.2 mm deep pocket. There should have been a 0.5 mm ceiling. This is what mechanical engineers call line-to-line — and since it breaks such a basic rule, it must have been intentional. It is even possible that our unit was under pressure when we opened it.”*
(*https://www.instrumental.com/blog/2016/12/1/aggressive-design-caused-samsung-galaxy-note-7-battery-explosions)

That is why I was asking about how it fits in terms of height.

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For reference, see the results of Samsung’s investigation in this Ars Technica article.

FP1 has indefinite space for the battery to expand (well, at least until the next room wall, if you are indoors). → Detachable back cover, not glued together.

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