Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An update on the Farphone's battery

far.computer

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 65 posts

Re: An update on the Farphone's battery

#31

Post by Reason077 »

While I’ve seen plenty of swollen and deformed phone batteries, I’ve never personally seen one that has burned. Obviously it’s happened in the past with certain phone/battery models, but I’d imagine that it’s actually very rare now days?

On the other hand, I have seen cheap 18650s spontaneously start smoking even when they weren’t plugged in to anything…

Re: An update on the Farphone's battery

#32

Post by ewoodrich »

Induane wrote: post #5
conradev wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For how long?

I have a fire tablet I hucked into my wall to use as a home assistant console. It's been in there for 5 years now, always plugged in.

I've been using an old Pixelbook for 3 years that I had laying around for an always on Home Assistant control panel (but with adaptive dimming that defaults so extremely low brightness to reduce heat until approaching it).

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. With USB-C PD a well-designed device should be able to get whatever power is needed on demand but manufacturers don't really have any incentive to future proof for the .01% of users like me who would benefit.

Re: An update on the Farphone's battery

#35

Post by cretinoid »

bayindirh wrote: post #23
cretinoid wrote: post #19

The real question is "what the hell is a farphone"?

Your answer lies on https://far.computer In short, far phone is the phone which powers far computer which is in turn served from https://far.computer

Funny. I really thought it was a mistake :)

Re: An update on the Farphone's battery

#37

Post by sanitycheck »

Induane wrote: post #5
conradev wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For how long?

I have a fire tablet I hucked into my wall to use as a home assistant console. It's been in there for 5 years now, always plugged in.

I have a Samsung tablet in a non-flammable container waiting to be disposed of after being mostly plugged in for 3 years then suddenly swelling quite alarmingly. YMMV.

Re: An update on the Farphone's battery

#39

Post by kccqzy »

These days it is rare for a phone to be able to be used without a battery. The reason is that the max energy consumption when the CPU and GPU are running 100% exceeds the wattage that the device can accept over USB PD.
Post reply on HN