[HN Gopher] Smartphone without a battery (2022)
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Smartphone without a battery (2022)
Author : MYEUHD
Score : 84 points
Date : 2025-12-12 07:36 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (yaky.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (yaky.dev)
| fer wrote:
| Related (and on the frontpage):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46239177
| yaky wrote:
| Looks like someone else posted this one though :)
| fsflover wrote:
| I'm happy that my smartphone, Librem 5, can already run without a
| battery.
| 31337Logic wrote:
| Huh? What do you mean? Their own product page states that it
| comes with a 4,500mAh User-Replaceable battery.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I assume GP means that it'll work with no battery connected
| if plugged in.
| fsflover wrote:
| Correct.
| autoexec wrote:
| Can it reliably send and receive calls and texts yet though?
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/11ho5xo/the_good_th...
| stavros wrote:
| I came here to be dismissive ("power is power, what's the big
| deal?"), but this is a legitimately useful guide on how to fake a
| battery. Thanks for this.
| jwong_ wrote:
| I have a box full of old unique phones that while I technically
| can get replacement batteries, the replacements have generally
| been awful and bloated very quickly.
|
| I will have to give a go at this guide to extend some life to
| these phones
| cl3misch wrote:
| > Basic phone charger <1A USB power supply was not enough to even
| finish booting, but a ~2A was enough to boot and launch octo4a
|
| So it's drawing >1A over a single diode? Let's say 1.4A and 700mV
| voltage drop over the diode, then it's roughly 1W over the diode.
| Won't it get pretty hot?
| ZiiS wrote:
| The diagram calls it a 1N4001 which is rated to sustain 1A (but
| 40% over is probably fine). A safe 1N5400 would still be
| pennies.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| Author should've just used a $1 adjustable buck converter
| with USB-C in. There would be no issues with heat, or the
| need for a big capacitor even.
| SirFatty wrote:
| I see the author implemented a true circuit board.
| wiseowise wrote:
| It is criminal that supercomputers in our pockets have expiration
| dates.
|
| Even cheapest phone these days is hundreds times more powerful
| than PS2, has better camera on par or better with most feature
| phones back in the days and cellular/wifi. They can be used for
| detection, automation or just plain fun/gaming.
|
| But no, you can't install Linux to overcome bloated, insecure
| abandonware (old Androids, iOS). Built-in, hot pillow of a
| battery that is pain in the ass to remove and even then it can't
| work without it.
| 747-8I wrote:
| I understand. I got a Linux phone & its remarkably decent - its
| called Jolla
|
| https://jolla.com/
| bobim wrote:
| I need to know if this is running e-banking a.k.a. "we are
| secure, yet is that you that made this payment" apps?
| everdrive wrote:
| People are nuts, that's all there is to it. They're worried
| about thinness, but meanwhile buy phones that are so tall and
| wide they cannot actually fit in a pocket. There's no benefit
| whatsoever to the thinness, except that someone else's phone is
| thicker. And no, water damage is not a concern. You can
| absolutely build phones with a battery compartment that can
| safely be fully submerged in water.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I have a 6.9 inch screen, which is the biggest if not
| extremely close, and it fits in my pocket just fine. It fits
| well _because_ it 's so thin.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| And it would still fit in your pocket even if it was few
| more millimetre thick. And, it is better to make the
| pockets bigger by a few millimetres rather than making the
| phones thicker.
| dspillett wrote:
| I think mine is stated as 6.7" and pretty thin. I wouldn't
| say it fits comfortably in all conditions. In some
| trousers/shorts it either sticks out a bit or digs in my
| side when I'm sat and bend (to tie a show, etc).
| fhdkweig wrote:
| Are real people worried about thinness? I don't think I have
| ever met anyone outside of a marketing department that has
| asked for a thinner phone vs one with more battery life.
| hamdingers wrote:
| The iPhone Air is the most recent proof that consumers
| don't actually care about thinness.
| exitb wrote:
| In a broader context, it's actually a bit of an oddity that
| computers had this brief moment of hackability. You can
| probably turn an old washing machine into a lathe, but it would
| be crazy for its manufacturer to even acknowledge this idea.
| rashidujang wrote:
| Tangentially related, I have recently been using my S10+ as a
| makeshift media server running Jellyfin in Termux. The main
| problem I had was that it is unsafe to keep a device perpetually
| charging and my first thought was to create a Routine to turn on
| the charger when the battery is above a certain threshold and off
| when it is below. This post gives me an alternative idea to try.
| leke wrote:
| I have an old Samsung that runs Android 4.4 and runs directly
| from USB without a battery. It's a shame phones don't do this
| anymore.
| summermusic wrote:
| We have a 64-bit Toshiba tablet mounted on the wall in our
| kitchen that works wonderfully as a control surface for
| HomeAssistant. The battery was easy to remove and it runs off of
| its own barrel plug connector.
|
| We were thinking to reproduce this in our hallway, but all the
| spare touchscreen devices (tablets and phones that were our own
| and from family/friends) have these integrated batteries, and
| research seems to suggest that none of them will work without a
| battery anyways, so we are going to attempt to do something like
| this with an old iPhone or Android phone.
|
| We have some PinePhones lying around that have removable
| batteries and run just fine without them, but alas they are so
| underpowered that they can't really run the bloated HomeAssistant
| web portal, and we don't want to write a custom frontend.
| progforlyfe wrote:
| I love stuff like this. There must be millions of similar old
| Android devices that can still perform tasks like this, or even
| tiny web servers. Similar to what raspberry PIs are used for, but
| more powerful.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| The 1N4001 diode is only rated at 1 A but the article says that
| the phone draws 2 A at times. Might be worth using a higher rated
| diode or two in parallel for greater reliability.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| It will probably be fine, since the 1N4001 is also rated for
| temporary spikes to 30A.
|
| "For 1N4001 Diode, the maximum current carrying capacity is 1A
| it withstand peaks up to 30A."
|
| https://components101.com/diodes/1n4001-diode-pinout-datashe...
|
| They're also cheap as chips, so worst case if it blows they can
| swap out for 2 of them like you suggest.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| The 30 A rating is for a non-repetitive half cycle of 60 Hz,
| aka 8.3 ms. If the phone is drawing 2 A while booting that's
| much more than 8.3 ms. Obviously it does survive in the
| application described in the post but it seems like pointless
| penny pinching to not choose a suitably rated device
| especially when the article itself talks about inrush current
| overloading other parts when the 1000 uF capacitor was
| discussed.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Last month I opened a drawer and found my Google Nexus One
| smartphone. It hadn't been turned on for 10 years and I figured
| the (easily removable) battery was done. I tried charging it
| anyway and to my surprise, it actually recovered and charged.
|
| It worked fine when I turned it on, but it's essentially a
| paperweight now because the US mobile carriers have all upgraded
| to 5G, and this is a 3G phone.
|
| The thing that struck me while doing this is just how tiny the
| Nexus One is. It's a full-featured (for the day) smartphone, but
| it's less than half the size of pretty much all the mainstream
| smart phones today. Battery life was decent, and the apps were
| pretty functional.
|
| My current phone is about twice the length, 50% wider, and twice
| as heavy. Battery life has been getting progressively worse with
| background apps draining your battery so they can scoop up and
| market whatever information about you they can. Battery life has
| also been impacted by the BLE tracking features, which run all
| the time.
|
| I wish I could upgrade the Nexus One with a 5G radio -- it would
| be a great phone today.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| Same here with Samsung J6. Super thin and light, removable
| battery, SIM card, microSD, and of course headphone jack. Would
| be great for everyday use, currently relegated to playing a
| single white noise .mp3 for kids to sleep.
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(page generated 2025-12-12 23:02 UTC)