Product Launch
anonymous
1 points
46 comments
Postedabout 1 month agoActiveabout 1 month ago
Farphone
far.computermaturehardwareconsumers
Key Features
battery updateimproved battery life
Farphonebattery lifehardware update
Key Features
i may have a case to buy a kindle then
any model recommendations?
It's been in there for 5 years now, always plugged in.
95%+ of people would report “zero problems here, all concern is overblown”.
Safety doesn’t work that way?
OK, but "fire" is right there, in the name.
I noticed a few months ago that the battery has started to significantly swell pushing the back panel apart, but I haven't worked up the motivation to try removing it yet. From what I can ascertain from user experiences, it actually does boot sans battery but haven't confirmed, it would be awesome if that worked and would probably give me 5+ more years of usage.
So in my case, data point is that 3 years of 24/7 use/charging of an old laptop/tablet was enough to push it over the edge and finally swell. It's really a shame how so many otherwise usable devices that could be wall mounted turn into e-waste because they won't run without a battery.
On older devices the controller might make some assumptions that holds true with a new battery, but very much doesn't with an old and worn one.
My Macs have all been sensible about it, but I've seen Windows machines with batteries that just died from being plugged in all the time not even 10 years ago. Even if that specific instance was just a bad battery and not due to a charge controller, I have no faith in Random Windows or Android OEM Number 582 doing this correctly.
Where things go off the rails is situations where extreme heat can be present (shoving phone in direct sunlight in window with hot climate is a bad move) another thing they don’t tolerate well and people don’t talk enough about this is deep discharging the batteries frequently. This causes a breakdown of the SEI membrane and makes it so future recharging generates more heat and gas. This will cause expansion and might cause a short/failure if poorly designed (galaxy note 7).
Ostensibly they contain charge controllers and temperature sensors, yet they're unable to prevent this outcome when the ambient temperature exceeds 110F day after day while the device stays on in a hot attic w/usb-c pd connected.
Fortunately I haven't had any burst into flames yet, but after a few years of seeing this pattern repeatedly I stopped deploying anything containing LiPo batteries at the property.
YMMV - but it's prudent to exclude these batteries from such unattended, powered 24x7 devices.
It worked as a stop-gap but I've since replaced it with a GL.Inet X300b ruggedized hotspot without any batteries.
There's no UPS for now... if I went the route of wanting uninterrupted power at the property I'd probably put a battery bank underground outside to power the entire building. It's not worth risking anything rechargeable inside the place given how hot it can get, and how long I sometimes go without visiting.
The situation is far more complicated for folks in apartments or high density housing.
These mobile LiPo-using rechargeable devices simply aren't ideal for being left powered while unattended, day after day, year after year. All it takes are some sunny days with normally closed blinds left open and you may slowly be cooking that device you forgot about that Just Works but is a ticking time bomb after the 10th day it spent an hour in direct sunlight while charging.
Just ban me and understand there are many more people that hate you than bother to tell you, and you deserve far more hate than you get. You have ruined what was once a great internet forum. The real irony is you pride yourself on being self-aware when I have always, for years, watched you choose willful ignorance.
What roasts the lifetime of my laptop batteries is compiling with gentoo, but again never an issue with catastrophic failure and I have 20+ years of experience with that as well.
Nowadays if I want to leave a device plugged in I crack it open, remove the battery cell, solder on a power supply and capacitor, and then do the nonsense with rooted Android to keep it from shutting itself down.
I'd guess it would have more to do with heat, though.
e.g.: MacBooks discharge the battery down to 80% by using the battery even if it's plugged in by citing "Rarely used battery", and keep the battery at 80% for at least half a day, then charge it again.
Li-ion is an adversarial chemistry. You need to take care of it or the battery bites back by puffing up or losing capacity very fast, or becoming an indoor firework.
I doubt the traffic hitting it would be sufficient to drain the battery overnight.
In short, far phone is the phone which powers far computer which is in turn served from https://far.computer
No actually, it is a Fairphone after all.
The name likely comes from “fairphone” with the “i” scraped off - see the photo: https://far.computer/
On the other hand, I have seen cheap 18650s spontaneously start smoking even when they weren’t plugged in to anything…
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