Also, though it’s more than $10, but my phone battery has gone to shit lately (f u Google for your shit pixels), and my anker mini power bank is carrying me right now: https://a.co/d/5lmsCiI
Not a pixel, but I literally just replaced my note 20 ultra battery like 2 hours ago. I have all the equipment and knowhow to rip phones apart that don’t want to let you. I believe most of the pixels aren’t too bad to get into and battery replace if you ever get a wild hair in you to give it a shot. Just fyi, go with an oem battery. Pretty much all aftermarket ones are terrible. Also be careful of the loads of counterfeits and used sold as new batts on eBay.
No, but it’s a great source to get stuff if they can get the parts, and all their tools should work well. If their batteries aren’t OEM ones, they won’t try to pass them off as such.
I’ve been fixing cell phones since the 90’s, along with a lot of other electronics, so most of my equipment has been a hodge-podge of sources I’ve collected over the past 25 or so years.
In the case of the battery I just got for my N20 Ultra, there is no source I could come up with that sold in the US and also seemed verifiable or completely trustworthy so I had to take a risk and order through a supplier off ebay. The pictures looked legit and like what I know the oem’s look like, and they had the correct looking adhesive and protective coverings on the batt, plus I messaged the seller back and fourth a couple of times and they stayed on their claim they had new oem batts, even after I’d mentioned I would capacity test the battery and leave them a review.
Now, I still won’t know for sure for a few more days. I’ll drain the batt to phone shut off and then charge to 100% plus 2 more hours a couple times, and then drain to shut off and charge it to 100% + 2 hours one more time while leaving the phone off and using my in line voltage/mah tester. Knock off batteries never get very close to an oem batts capacity.
Li-Po batteries degrade far faster when their charge level is at the levels the manufacturers call 0-15% or 85-100%; the exact minimum and maximum charge levels are a manufacturer decision that trades off total battery capacity when new against battery life. Manufacturers make the decision by thinking about what is most profitable for them, which is the biggest possible advertised (brand new) battery capacity, while dying quite fast (within a couple of years) to sell more, but not so fast consumers can claim it is faulty.
So they will happily make the battery last 1/5th of the life it otherwise would, for +30% brand new battery capacity, even if that 30% will be gone in a year of typical use.
Those decisions are aligned to the manufacturer’s interests, but they are seldom aligned to a consumer’s interest. Most consumers would be better off with 30% less battery capacity, but a phone battery that lasts 5x as long - many people for example charge every day, and only get down to 80% or something anyway.
The way to re-align to your interests are to: stop charging above 85%, and shut down at 15% instead of going down to 0%. You can do this manually, but it is a real pain; you can’t just plug it in, and leave it until it is charged, you’d need to micromanage charging. Some more responsible manufacturers (e.g. some Samsung devices) have features that will do this for you if you set preserve battery mode. Others, including Google, however, really don’t want you to do this, because it hurts their sales. They don’t provide standard APIs available to unrooted devices that would allow apps that do this.
If you are willing to root your device (and ideally install a third party Android distro like LineageOS), you can install ACCA (https://f-droid.org/packages/mattecarra.accapp/) on a rooted device, and set it to stop charging at 85%, and shut down at 15%. This will increase your battery life very significantly, and drastically slow the decline in capacity you’d otherwise see. Unfortunately, many manufacturers hate people taking control of their own devices this way; Google has unfortunately convinced major banks etc… to use their so called “Play Integrity API” to check that your device is “secure” (where secure is defined by Google as including a phone no longer receiving security patches, with known vulnerabilities that let someone trivially install a keylogger over the wifi, but excluding the same phone rooted by the owner, with a highly secure up-to-date LineageOS install, with extra security software like firewalls that stock Android wouldn’t allow, and with ACCA installed; it’s almost like “secure” means toeing the Google line, and the banks have been conned). There are sometimes ways to pass the Play Integrity API checks even when rooted, but Google is constantly battling users to try to break them. But it might be worth it for better security and battery life.
I have a Pixel 7 Pro and the battery sucks now. I want to wait another year because Verizon contracts are 36 months now. I hope my failing battery lasts that long.
This is good.
Also, though it’s more than $10, but my phone battery has gone to shit lately (f u Google for your shit pixels), and my anker mini power bank is carrying me right now: https://a.co/d/5lmsCiI
Not a pixel, but I literally just replaced my note 20 ultra battery like 2 hours ago. I have all the equipment and knowhow to rip phones apart that don’t want to let you. I believe most of the pixels aren’t too bad to get into and battery replace if you ever get a wild hair in you to give it a shot. Just fyi, go with an oem battery. Pretty much all aftermarket ones are terrible. Also be careful of the loads of counterfeits and used sold as new batts on eBay.
Did you just get everything from ifixit or what?
No, but it’s a great source to get stuff if they can get the parts, and all their tools should work well. If their batteries aren’t OEM ones, they won’t try to pass them off as such.
I’ve been fixing cell phones since the 90’s, along with a lot of other electronics, so most of my equipment has been a hodge-podge of sources I’ve collected over the past 25 or so years.
In the case of the battery I just got for my N20 Ultra, there is no source I could come up with that sold in the US and also seemed verifiable or completely trustworthy so I had to take a risk and order through a supplier off ebay. The pictures looked legit and like what I know the oem’s look like, and they had the correct looking adhesive and protective coverings on the batt, plus I messaged the seller back and fourth a couple of times and they stayed on their claim they had new oem batts, even after I’d mentioned I would capacity test the battery and leave them a review.
Now, I still won’t know for sure for a few more days. I’ll drain the batt to phone shut off and then charge to 100% plus 2 more hours a couple times, and then drain to shut off and charge it to 100% + 2 hours one more time while leaving the phone off and using my in line voltage/mah tester. Knock off batteries never get very close to an oem batts capacity.
My wife has a different style by them and it has served her very well for two years.
Tip for increasing the life of your next battery:
Li-Po batteries degrade far faster when their charge level is at the levels the manufacturers call 0-15% or 85-100%; the exact minimum and maximum charge levels are a manufacturer decision that trades off total battery capacity when new against battery life. Manufacturers make the decision by thinking about what is most profitable for them, which is the biggest possible advertised (brand new) battery capacity, while dying quite fast (within a couple of years) to sell more, but not so fast consumers can claim it is faulty.
So they will happily make the battery last 1/5th of the life it otherwise would, for +30% brand new battery capacity, even if that 30% will be gone in a year of typical use.
Those decisions are aligned to the manufacturer’s interests, but they are seldom aligned to a consumer’s interest. Most consumers would be better off with 30% less battery capacity, but a phone battery that lasts 5x as long - many people for example charge every day, and only get down to 80% or something anyway.
The way to re-align to your interests are to: stop charging above 85%, and shut down at 15% instead of going down to 0%. You can do this manually, but it is a real pain; you can’t just plug it in, and leave it until it is charged, you’d need to micromanage charging. Some more responsible manufacturers (e.g. some Samsung devices) have features that will do this for you if you set preserve battery mode. Others, including Google, however, really don’t want you to do this, because it hurts their sales. They don’t provide standard APIs available to unrooted devices that would allow apps that do this.
If you are willing to root your device (and ideally install a third party Android distro like LineageOS), you can install ACCA (https://f-droid.org/packages/mattecarra.accapp/) on a rooted device, and set it to stop charging at 85%, and shut down at 15%. This will increase your battery life very significantly, and drastically slow the decline in capacity you’d otherwise see. Unfortunately, many manufacturers hate people taking control of their own devices this way; Google has unfortunately convinced major banks etc… to use their so called “Play Integrity API” to check that your device is “secure” (where secure is defined by Google as including a phone no longer receiving security patches, with known vulnerabilities that let someone trivially install a keylogger over the wifi, but excluding the same phone rooted by the owner, with a highly secure up-to-date LineageOS install, with extra security software like firewalls that stock Android wouldn’t allow, and with ACCA installed; it’s almost like “secure” means toeing the Google line, and the banks have been conned). There are sometimes ways to pass the Play Integrity API checks even when rooted, but Google is constantly battling users to try to break them. But it might be worth it for better security and battery life.
I have a Pixel 7 Pro and the battery sucks now. I want to wait another year because Verizon contracts are 36 months now. I hope my failing battery lasts that long.
Have the fold.
Stupid expensive phone that lost half its battery life in less than a year.
It’s not rocket surgery, just have an option to limit charging to 85% like Samsung does.
I guess simple math is too hard for Google.