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

:warning: This post contains instructions that can cause severe harm to you. :warning:
Opening and modifying batteries is very dangerous.

The battery is the most dangerous part of any phone. It has in numerous cases been linked to explosions, wounds and property damage. Just search on the internet and you’ll find them.

Fairphone employees have seen with their own eyes the issues involved in the process of manufacturing batteries. The health and safety of the workers involved is very often in jeopardy.

The combination of a complex technical product, very severe consequences if done badly and the very limited amount of suppliers who produce in a responsible way, led Fairphone to the conclusion it was not able to produce batteries.

In the absence of complete documentation and information, and the possibility to visit the factory where these batteries are made, we are unable to approve or support third party batteries.

Fairphone values learning by opening your devices but we want you all to stay safe.

End of obligatory piece of text that is part of all topics in which people talk about putting unofficial batteries in their Fairphones.


Original Post

Hallo Kristin, der Einfachheit halber schicke ich diese Antwort auf Englisch.

After some search on the Internet, I found a suitable
while not perfect replacement battery for the Fairphpne 1:

It is the replacement battery for the Huawei HB5N1H. It
usually sells with an 1500mAh spec, but is also availble
with 1800mAh.

Akku fĂĽr Huawei wie HB5N1H u.a. 1800mAh (800106317) - , - VHBW B2B Shop

This battery is somewhat shorter the the Fairphone 1 original,
but with a resilient spacer, it does perfectly.

So far, it works well.

Regards, Hermann

PS: gerne kann ich Dir detallierte Tipps bzw. Fotos geben.

21 Likes

Vielen Dank für den Hinweis! Über die Zusatzhinweise wäre ich dankbar - ist denn die “Bastelei” mit dem Platzhalter unproblematisch?
Beste GrĂĽĂźe!

Hallo Kristin, das hat max. 1/2 Stunde gedauert. Du brauchst ein scharfes Messer (zB Teppichmesser) und ein StĂĽck Neopren (fĂĽr Abstandshalter). Den Neoprenstreifen
(Dicke ca. 5mm) habe ich keilförmig zugeschnitten zur besseren Einpassung. An der
oberen Ecke gegenüber den Kontakten musste ich die Ausklinkung etwas vergrößern
(< 1mm). Ich habe ein Foto hochgeladen.
Falls ich noch weiter helfen kann, vielleicht besser ĂĽber meuth@h-da.de. Ich kann Dir
gerne ein passendes StĂĽck Neopren zuschicken. Es war fĂĽr mich selber sehr frustrierend,
dass der Akku nicht mehr verfĂĽgbar ist. Deshalb helfe ich gerne.
GrĂĽĂźe aus Hessen, Hermann

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Super, vielen Dank für die ergänzenden Hinweise - das hilft mir sehr, ich habe erst im Januar den Display reparieren lassen, und nun der Ärger mit dem Akku. Wäre schade, wenn ich das Telefon nun aufgeben müsste. Insofern eine praktikable Alternative, danke!

How much did you pay for that battery? I see here that it’s € 9,59, but during checkout with “Sofortüberweisung” they seem to charge the VAT twice.

Edit: I contacted them and they said that they have indeed a bug in their system.
Edit2: I’ve ordered one of these batteries. I will do some testing and take the battery with me to #efct17. :slight_smile:

In the meanwhile: @HermannMeuth: Using a system monitor app, can you confirm that the battery temperature monitoring works?

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thanks for this! can i ask how exactly you looked for this replacement?

i frankly don’t get why it is so hard to get a replacement battery that fits the specific size measures. obviously FP themselves must have looked into this, hence the sourcing problem.

i can’t find the simple battery size at all, but in mine it’s 6 x 5,1 x 0,4cm - so can anyone tell me why any battery that fits these wouldn’t work?

embarrassingly, the only site i found that actually lists measures is amazon, so e.g. this should fit:

Because the right number, the right placing and the right wiring of the contacts are important, too?

1 Like

ehm, i assume your question mark is ironic. to ask genuinely: which number, what wiring? by placing, you mean where the contacts are?

purely based on the images of both batteries, the dentures and placement of contacts could work, right? the voltage is comparable, the capacity (mAh) is another matter. right?

so who else has looked (must be loads), how and with what results?

thanks!

As you can see, that Anker battery has 4 pins:

The original FP1 battery has 3 pins, just like the generic Huawei battery from above.

1 Like

No, I just don’t have much insight in this case, so I’m rather cautious :wink: .

These would just be my generic concerns apart from a fitting size … There are batteries with a different number of contacts, so the number is important. Where exactly they are placed and with how much space between them may differ, too, so that may be important. And which contact serves which function (sorry, no electrician here) should be important, too, that’s what I meant with wiring, I don’t know whether there is an established standard for that.

The working battery @HermannMeuth found has 3 contacts on the right (labeled) side.

https://electropapa.com/media/catalog/product/cache/2/image/700x700/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/5/0/500_1456142906_akku_huawei_hb5n1h_1800mah/electropapa-li-ion-akku-1800mah-3-7v-f-r-handy-smartphone-telefon-wie-hb5n1.jpg

The battery you linked to has 4 contacts on the left (labeled) side.

To me that seems to be a significant difference, so I would be cautious.

3 Likes

I just measured the dimensions of my FP1 battery and I’d rather say that they are 6.1 x 5.3 x 0.5 cm.

PS.: According to this page the Huawei replacement battery has these dimensions:

51.30 x 50.80 x 5.60 mm

3 Likes

understood, useful info, thanks again!

so it makes sense that spare part sites list only the models they’ll fit. still, there’s an absolute ton of batteries of course, so that leaves the most important question:

how exactly do you search for a suitable replacement, and is there really no closer fit than the one @HermannMeuth found?

As a company we advice against this. Keep in mind is that you will have to really proper test a battery to ensure for example that the thermistor has the same properties. It has to work well with the rest of the circuit in the FP1 in order to shut down the phone in case the battery pack starts overheating. Otherwise you will have a thermal runaway with catastrophic consequences…

6 Likes

douwe, the security concern is duly noted and addressed in the subject.

could you share any productive detail on what FP has done in terms of research?
no lengthy explanations, of course, only what is actually useful. that would be great, thanks.

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I found this closer fit, but I wouldn’t want to try it. It looks dangerous and their advertising is suspicious:

Besides it is sold out, but it would have been 6 € for 2 batteries… :stuck_out_tongue:

This one might work: Vaihtoakku kännykkään Samsung Galaxy S3 mini / Ace 2 / Trend / Trend Plus / S Duos / S Duos 2, 1500mAh (same dimensions as the dodgy 2-for-6-euro one).

Edit: The more sources I find the more I think that the Samsung EB-F1M7F comes closest to the FP1 battery. Dimensions: 50,5 x 60,5 x 4,45 mm. I wonder whether it would really fit the FP1 and if the temperature monitoring would work (the central pin).

Edit2: There seems to be two batteries that are identical apart from the number of pins. The Samsung EB-F1M7F seems to have 4 of them, while the Samsung EB-L1M7 has only three. Both of them are advertised for the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini (different flavours admittedly).

4 Likes

thanks, stefan!

funny, compatibility w galaxy s3 mini, the anker one w four pins said the same.

i think dx.com is fairly reputable; as regards the price, given that they’re all made in china, no reason to pay the likes of amazon a huge premium. not sure how fair their sourcing is, in either case. what do you think of this one?
http://www.dx.com/p/replacement-2450mah-3-7v-battery-for-samsung-i869-i8552-i8530-golden-254136?Utm_rid=44649631&Utm_source=affiliate#.WWZFxuk3VPZ

so how did you go about looking for these, by dimension, model compatibility?

and can anyone else shed any light on the fit (temp etc), or how you could find out? nothing complicated, but practical advice.

The S beam battery looks ok-ish, but it’s also too short. Mind that the batteries could have a much lower capacity, depending on how much time ago they were produced.

I just clicked through the batteries on this page and found the samsung galaxy s3 mini one by chance. I think I got to that page by searching “smartphone batteries dimensions” in duckduckgo.

There are apps that can display the battery temperature. If it shows about 25°C on a freshly booted phone it should work and it should go up to about 38°C when you use 3G for a while (that’s my experience with the original FP1 battery).

When you let the phone lie in the direct sun, it should eventually give you a warning tone and shut down because of overheating.

Hi,

thanks for sharing, HermannMeuth! I just ordered two of those vhbw batteries and I will try your solution.

Besides, I wonder if the temperature sensor thing is really a problem. There’s a temperature sensor inside the battery and yes, it provides the phone with the information about the temperature. But it would be a high risk to rely on the phone to shut off the battery (a software bug could prevent that from working) in case of overheating. So my guess (just a guess) is that the battery protection circuit takes care of that and just reports the temperature to the phone for additional safety an/or diagnostic measures.

Does anybody have reliable information on this topic?

Since @werner_noebauer links to a supposedly equivalent but sold out Changhong battery for P6T, V9 and others here, … how about this:

https://guide.alibaba.com/t-shop/kucipa-changhong-w6-qiao-yue-chi-choi-w20s-changhong-p6t-v9-battery-battery-cell-phone-battery-plate_68806867.html

https://guide.alibaba.com/image/i3/kucipa-changhong-w6-qiao-yue-chi-choi-w20s-changhong-p6t-v9-battery-battery-cell-phone-battery-plate/TB1V7PuFVXXXXcOaXXXXXXXXXXX_!!0-item_pic.jpg

“971 suppliers can give you a quotation.” … Perhaps Fairphone could buy a few and check out whether they are any good.

Edit: Found another site with some more pictures of this battery:

http://www.bdhzj.com/chanpin/50191715.html

8 Likes

yeah, brilliant. @Douwe, has this been tried?

@werner_noebauer, @HermannMeuth et al, how did you establish equivalence?