How to recover Li-Ion battery: a few available tips

Modern batteries are stay to be one of the biggest problems as for the manufacturers as well as for consumers. And it’s not just potential flaming risk, but the slow draining of the source power. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that charging battery on the regular basis makes them work not more than a year or two with active use, after then their capacity is drastically decreasing and using your precious device becomes problematic. It’s impossible to completely restore a fully drained battery, but to extend the usage, while looking for new one is quite possible. So that’s what we’ll talk about today.

The following recommendations are for advanced users. So if you can’t make heads or tails of soldering tool it would be better to contact customer service or you could just go straight to local electronic store for a new battery.

Method №1

It can be useful in cases when battery generates gas due to continuous usage, as a result it gets bulged and can’t hold its charge.

Required tools and materials are: soldering iron, epoxy, fine needle, a heavy flat object for alignment.

1. Carefully detach battery case from upper block with sensor
2. Separate electric sensor
3. There should be a cap. Inside that cap the control electronics is located.
   Accurately pierce it with the needle. Keep in mind that damaged electric inwards will make following battery restoration impossible.
4. Considering the battery size you should find a heavy flat object witch should be slightly bigger than the battery.
5. Here’s the crucial moment. Put the Battery on a table and create some pressure on it with press. Note that making to much effort can cause battery to be damaged, as well as making less effort could not give required result. It’s strongly recommended not to use any kind of vice or other similar purpose tools.
6. When everything is done put a drop of epoxy on the hole and solder the sensor

Method №2

This method will not completely revive the battery with much reduced resources, but will certainly make it work for some time. You shouldn’t count much on it, but it would provide some power for your smartphone, while you’re looking for new battery.

Required tools and materials: any power supply (5-12V, AC not less than 0.1 A), voltmeter or tester to monitor the voltage, resistor (capacity should be at least 500 mWt, resistance of 330 Ohm to 1000 Ohm)

1. If you don’t have any power supply, it’s ok to use one from your network equipment (e.g. switches, routers, modems). You should be sure that AC options are meet the requirements.
2. Release the contacts from power supply and connect them with drained battery: power supply “minus” with battery “minus”. “Plus” line ads with resistor. Check the correct polarity with multimeter.
3. When everything is prepared, connect the power supply to the network. Procedure should take approximately 2-3 minutes. If possible, control process with tester: maximum voltage must not exceed 3.3V

A few important notes

• Do not leave problematic battery unattended. The cases of spontaneous ignition is not a theory, but a harsh reality.
• Periodically check the temperature of the battery with the use of bypass thermocouple, electronic thermometer or just by hand. If the surface feels to be hot, not just warm, immediately stop repairing.
• Do not use excessive charging currents. The maximum you can afford is 50 mAh. This parameter is calculated as follows: voltage of power supply divided by the capacitance of the resistor. For example, if the first parameter is equal to 12V, and the second is 500 Ohms, the charge current will be equal to 24 mAh.
• Instead of a resistor, you can use a standard 80mm computer fan.
• In order to avoid spontaneous ignition it is recommended to control the initial charging of the restored battery

Method №3

This Method is controversial and questionable, although according to dedicated forums it helps some users, so the responsibility for any negative consequences lies with you.

Required tools and materials: a working fridge.

1. Take the broken battery out of your smartphone and put it in a plastic bag, then the bag must be put in the freezer for 20-30 minutes
2. Then take it out and put it back in your phone, and start charging for 1 minute
3. remove it from the device again, let it warm up to room temperature, then charge as usual..

Method №4

Innocuous, but less than effective recovery method. But if you think that your smartphone’s battery is ultimately out of order, why not try it?

Tools and materials required: smartphone with standard battery charger.

1. Discharge the battery completely (up to the stage when the phone can not be switched on). Any resource-intensive game or AnTuTu utility may prove helpful for this.
2. Fully charge the battery up to the 100% level.
3. Repeat points 1 and 2 several times.

Method №5

Almost all professional electricians will consider procedures described below a blasphemy, but many users of old batteries have proved this method to be helpful.

NOTICE: I strongly discourage you from using this method unless you have tried other, less risky ones.

Tools and materials required: razor blade, skinny screwdriver, ‘Moment’ glue.

1. Retrieve the battery from your phone.
2. Peel off the technical specification label.
3. Remove as much of the top plastic cover, that protects control electronic components, as possible.
4. Find main contact elements.
5. Short-circuit them just for an instant with the help of any metallic object.
6. Glue the top cover back and let the glue dry off.I want to draw your attention to the fact that none of the methods above guarantee a 100% result, and the whole responsibility falls utterly on your shoulders. But if the battery shuts off completely and buying a new one is not the prospect of your immediate future, you should try them out. In case your rarely find yourself in the process of soldering something and have no head for science, it’s safer to ask a friend who is well-versed in such things.

Video Tutorial

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