Smartphone Battery Replacement – Is it Worth It?

If you, like most people, use your smartphone on a daily basis, then you will probably be only too familiar with the gradual degradation that smartphone batteries undergo over time. As time goes on and the battery runs through more charge cycles, all types of problems become gradually apparent. Your smart battery’s battery management system may go so awry as to report completely inaccurate battery life percentages, or you may notice that your phone becomes sluggish and temperamental in the cold. The most marked effect, however, will be that your phone just runs out of juice much faster.

Luckily, none of these problems are totally unsolvable. The only issue is that the solution is usually to get an entirely new smartphone. In some cases, this makes a great deal of economic sense and, although new models of Android and iOS smartphones alike are being released on a regular basis, it does take quite a while before a modern smartphone becomes a sluggish unwieldy piece of junk that has trouble properly connecting to networks or loading apps. Accordingly, by the time a phone degrades to this point, most people are quite happy to invest in a new one.

Replacing a Phone Battery Today

However, there is an alternative strategy, and that is replacing the battery in your smartphone, something that can work out cheaper than getting a new phone. If you are attached to your device, and you do not much care what the latest gimmicky smartphone features are, then that is even more reason to go for this option.

Nevertheless, there are a few things that could put you off replacing the battery on an old phone. For one thing, most modern smartphones cannot be simply opened in order to remove the battery and so it might seem like you need to be an engineer to get in there. There is also the issue of finding a battery that fits into your old phone. Nonetheless, this last challenge is nevertheless similar with the opportunity to actually upgrade your phone; battery technology is developing all the time, and you could potentially replace your phone battery with a superior version.

New Trends in Battery Technology

The reason why replacing your battery might prove a very good idea is that battery technology is developing fast. Although there have already been proposed alternatives to the lithium-ion battery, a great deal of development has focused on making li-ion batteries themselves more efficient.

To take some examples, we might here think of the portable solar power packs that are bringing an efficient electrical supply to offroad travelers. Or the USB rechargeable batteries produced by the likes of Pale Blue Earth, which take the age-old design of household AA and AAA batteries and bring to the latest li-ion smart battery technology to bear.

With these recent trends in mind, it is easy to see how replacing your smartphone’s battery could amount to an upgrade rather than a repair.

How to Replace Your Smartphone Battery

If you ultimately decide to replace your ageing smartphone battery, it is important to know how to do so correctly. Apple, for example, run a strict warranty program for their products, which means that if you open the phone yourself and something goes wrong, they are no longer obliged to help.

For iPhones and Androids alike, you will need some special tools if you wish to replace the battery yourself. And to avoid making a fateful mistake, you might wish to have a professional do it. The price of this is usually around the $50 mark – and that is certainly cheaper than a new phone.