An old shop owner in Tulsa showed me why my phone battery kept dying

Back in 2018 I had this ancient LG from 2012 that would barely hold a charge. Took it to this tiny repair shop run by an older guy named Ray. He popped the back off, looked at the battery for maybe 10 seconds, and said "you keep charging it overnight, dont you." I said yeah, howd you know. He just pointed at the swollen spot near the edge. Said modern batteries hate being full for 8 hours straight, old habits die hard with us frugal types. He swapped in a used battery from a drawer for 12 bucks and showed me a timer plug he used for his own phone. That thing lasted another 2 years after that. Anyone else got an old gadget where the battery outlived the phone itself, or is that just me?

2 comments

2 Comments

julia2861mo ago

Did that old phone eventually die on you, or did you finally upgrade? I had a Galaxy from 2014 that I treated like garbage, yet it outlived like three "better" phones, so I get the attachment to a stubborn one.

fiona5021mo ago

Them old Galaxys were tanks, no lie. I read somewhere that phone makers actually plan for batteries to wear out around the 2 year mark so you buy a new one, which explains why my old LG acted like it had a death wish only when I treated it nice. Ray telling me about the timer plug was a lightbulb moment. I started doing that with my current phone and it's been like 3 years and the battery still reads healthy on the settings screen. It's wild how we all got trained to just plug it in every night and not think about it. So no, it aint just you, being stubborn with old tech often works out better than chasing the upgrade.

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