Battery swollen

[Christian42]

Hi,

I think i have a very well known issue in my laptop: a swollen battery.

It seems to me like in the beginning some people were getting replacements by HP, so I try to reach out, but am not really hopeful.

Anyway I wanted to report my issue and maybe the community has some fresh ideas?

I think that this issue occurs is aggregating in so many ways...

The system charges the battery is always to 100%, which is the best way to kill it as fast as possible. I was not able to find in the system a setting to change this. Furthermore, the battery charging controller seems to be an ISL9238. And, as far as I can see, it DOES allow to set a lower voltage at which it would stop charging, merely by changing a setting in its memory.

I thought about hooking it up to an I2C controller and reprogramm that registers. But maybe it is even easier because it can be accessed via the internal SMBus? If someone knows how to access it, please let me know how!

Anyway, it seems to be difficult to get a replacement battery. I am considering to buy individual LiPo cells and replace them in my current battery. Maybe someone here has tried that already?

Here a few pictures:

this is how far i can still close the bottom lid:

Best regards

Christian42

[Huffer]

It is a well-known issue. My employee's laptop in the next office is swelling like a tic and a new battery is on order. He and I both have Zbook 15 G3s. I am on my third battery and this will be the third one for him in 3 years. We love the laptops except for this issue. We used to have them under a monitor stand and I thought restricted airflow and heat was the problem but his has recently and very quickly swollen up out in the open air. I know there are enthusiasts who rebuild batteries so I know its possible to do. I do not believe the swelling has caused any damage to the smart chip inside the batteries. Even when swollen they still perform OK, just start deforming the chassis of the laptop which is not acceptable. 

Battery (6-cell, 84–WHr, 3.64Ah, Li-ion 928372-855

I agree that battery is hard to locate. 220 Euros for the only one I can find on German eBay or amazon. 

[Christian42]

Thanks for the reply!

220€ seems really a lot. I think I can replace the cells for a lot less and will probably try that.

I agree, I did not notice a reduced battery life yet. (but also didn't look at that closely). I saw cases in which the frame even cracked because of the swollen battery.

Do you know if the laptop can be used without a battery?

[Huffer]

Yes I did that with mine for about a week last time I replaced the battery, while I waited for the replacement to arrive. The mains battery may and likely does also serve as the CMOS/RTC battery so you may lose BIOS settings but the laptop will work. By the way, we have had the problem both with "genuine" HP batteries and aftermarket 3rd party products. 

[Christian42]

Ok, that will make the replacement process a bit easier.

Did you encounter issues that a third party battery does not get charged as it is not genuine? Or maybe even the CPU gets throttled?

I measured the voltage at the battery:12.63V which is 4.21V per cell (if balanced evenly. I was not able to locate a balancing ciruit so far. Maybe missing balancing speeds up the aging process even more?)

So it seems not really a surprise that thrid party or genuine batteries get issues...

[Huffer]

No the third party batteries work fine. No CPU throttling no charging issues no annoying "non-genuine" error messages