Phone farms
 

Put your phones to work earning money to buy replacement batteries or more phones.
[url]https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3naek/how-to-make-a-phone-farm?utm_source=pocket-newtab[/url]

[QUOTE=kriesel;522884]Put your phones to work earning money to buy replacement batteries or more phones.
[url]https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3naek/how-to-make-a-phone-farm?utm_source=pocket-newtab[/url][/QUOTE]

While I don't support the clickfarm-fraud business model, the associated how-to videos and such are more or less directly applicable for some wanting to set up a compute cluster for other purposes.

Decided to be bold earlier today, all of my bloat-o-phones were charged near 100%, too impatient to fire up Mlucas on one and let it run 3-4 hours to discharge ... just took the most-swollen phone, slipped a sewing needle in the gap created by the swollen battery wedging apart the back from the front housing (see pic below), poked a tiny hole in the foil battery cover. Now I had practiced this before on an S7 which I had earlier basically destroyed by trying to disassemble it to get at the battery - that allowed me to feel the battery pack before and after hole-pokage to let out the excess gas, which told me that the insides are basically solid-core ... there was no liquid leakage out the hole I made.

The one I poked today deswelled nicely, booted up fine and has been cranking Mlucas for 4-5 hours ... its OS must've decided on boot that is was time for a battery discharge/recharge cycle because it ran down to 0, shut off, now after restarting is slowly charging, slowly because under the same full 4-core load. No sign of leakage or explosions yet, ha ... will keep an eye on it for 24-48 hours before attempting the same treatment on one of its fellow bloated brethren. Wish me luck!

I don't understand how releasing the gas can make the battery "work" again.

I guess that the pressure was causing something else to fail. Perhaps the mainboard has dry joints that are distorted when it is flexed.

I still say that if anyone wants to make the devices last ten times longer they will have to find a way to either eliminate the batteries completely, or find a supply of new batteries. And by new I mean freshly made, not stocking up now and trying to use them years later.

[QUOTE=retina;523057]I don't understand how releasing the gas can make the battery "work" again.[/QUOTE]

You misunderstand - the battery never stopped working, it just got so bloated that it started tearing the case apart and representing an explosion risk. I was worried that hole-pokage might cause liquid leakage and such, but no sign of that so far on the one I've performed surgery on.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;523085]You misunderstand - the battery never stopped working, it just got so bloated that it started tearing the case apart and representing an explosion risk. I was worried that hole-pokage might cause liquid leakage and such, but no sign of that so far on the one I've performed surgery on.[/QUOTE]

I don't think lithium batteries so much "leak" as "explode". If it didn't explode when you poked it (by creating an internal short) then I guess you'd be okay? :smile:

There's no shortage of videos online of people destroying Li-ion batteries... on purpose. Those might give you a better idea of what to expect and what could happen in a worst-case scenario. And also entertaining. LOL

[QUOTE=Madpoo;523249]I don't think lithium batteries so much "leak" as "explode". If it didn't explode when you poked it (by creating an internal short) then I guess you'd be okay? :smile:

There's no shortage of videos online of people destroying Li-ion batteries... on purpose. Those might give you a better idea of what to expect and what could happen in a worst-case scenario. And also entertaining. LOL[/QUOTE]

As of today, 5 swollen-battery phones - 4 which I'd shut off before trying the pinhole-vent surgery, and 1 which was running but had gotten pretty bloated - successfully pinhole-vented. On pulling the sewing needle out I typically hear a faint hiss as the accumulated gas vents, and then I can use the palms of my hands to gently squeeze together the bloating-wedged-apart front and back case sections so everything snaps nicely back into place, power the phone back up and away we go. The surgeried phones have been running 24/7 from 1-5 days, so far without incident. The fact that I've only heard gassy noises on poking the hole, never liquid-bubbling, tells me the innards of the battery are perhaps not dry but not liquid. I'm guessing if the venting causes eventual deterioration it will more likely be via slow drying-out of the innards (though the hole is tiny and pressing the case back together may effectively close it back up again, while allowing any further gases to continually be vented) rather than leakage of any corrosive liquid.

Again, several months of 24/7 running will tell the tale, but wouldn't it be amusing if such a simple fix sufficed for most such cellphone battery problems? I mean, judging from the search-engine hits, the incidence of this particular issue is legion.

Unrelatedly, on the software side of things, for unknown reasons UserLand refused to boot up on all the restarted phones, got stuck in "starting services..." mode. But I had backed up all my Mlucas savefiles before powering each bloating-afflicted phone down, so it was a simple matter to uninstalll UserLand, reinstall from the apk file still stored in User Files, install ssh, copy the backed-up files from my PC to the phone and resume.

Electrolytes may be organic (flammable) liquid, ceramic, or glass. [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Electrolytes[/url]

How disappointing
 

They left out Mlucas [url]https://www.computerworld.com/article/2487680/20-great-uses-for-an-old-android-device.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab[/url]

[QUOTE=kriesel;527046]They left out Mlucas [url]https://www.computerworld.com/article/2487680/20-great-uses-for-an-old-android-device.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab[/url][/QUOTE]

You bastards! :) Relatedly, I think it would be a good thing to try to contact some of the folks in the computer-magazine world who regularly do ARM benchmarks about adding Mlucas to same.

[QUOTE=Madpoo;523249]I don't think lithium batteries so much "leak" as "explode". If it didn't explode when you poked it (by creating an internal short) then I guess you'd be okay? :smile:

There's no shortage of videos online of people destroying Li-ion batteries... on purpose. Those might give you a better idea of what to expect and what could happen in a worst-case scenario. And also entertaining. LOL[/QUOTE]

I just added an UPDATE section to the Mlucas-on-Android-phone section of the [url=http://www.mersenneforum.org/mayer/README.html]Mlucas README[/url] page which resembles that remark.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;523255]...
Unrelatedly, on the software side of things, for unknown reasons UserLand refused to boot up on all the restarted phones, got stuck in "starting services..." mode. But I had backed up all my Mlucas savefiles before powering each bloating-afflicted phone down, so it was a simple matter to uninstalll UserLand, reinstall from the apk file still stored in User Files, install ssh, copy the backed-up files from my PC to the phone and resume.[/QUOTE]
I remember userland being very finicky in how you get it started, navigate to the wrong tab and back or switching tabs while it was still loading and it stalled.