[ale] [Semi-ot rant] Why is obtaining a cell phone battery such a degrading experience?

[Byron Jeff]

On Tue, Oct 07, 2014 at 02:17:16PM -0400, Neal Rhodes wrote:
>    Am I the only person that keeps their android smartphone more than a
>    year?

Nope. Going on three with my current one.

>   Because the new ones aren't any better and I'm grandfathered
>    into an unlimited Verizon data plan?

Understood.

>    But try to get a battery - sheesh.

Agreed.

>    After looking all over, I call BatteryMonster and they swear these are
>    new OEM batteries.
>    So, I order 2 of them.
>    Today they showup:
>        The color of the label is wrong.
>        The label doesn't fit snugly on the plastic case.
>        They BOTH have the SAME serial#.  My two genuine HTC batteries have
>    different ones, and the later one has.......wait for it....... a higher
>    serial#.
>        That Serial number is LOWER than the serial number on my original
>    battery which is now three years old.

Typical.

>    In short, these are obvious counterfeits.  They copied the same label
>    from years ago and slap it on every one they crank out.
>    I dunno.  What do I expect.   I call HTC and they say they aren't
>    making replacement BTR6425B batteries anymore.
>    But given that these batteries are known to sometimes explode and burn,
>    one would like to avoid unknowns.

I've tried at least 4 different batteries in my Samsung Galaxy S2 Skyrocket
and each and every one was much worse than the 2+ YO OEM battery the phone
came with.

I wish there were a solid solution to the problem.

BAJ



-- 
Byron A. Jeff
Chair: Department of Computer Science and Information Technology
College of Information and Mathematical Sciences
Clayton State University
http://faculty.clayton.edu/bjeff