Having an ancient flip phone in need of a battery, I ordered a Kyocera TXBAT10133 battery from eBay. Described as “new” (which, according to the Ebay listing, means “New: A brand-new, unused, unopened, undamaged item in its original packaging”), I was somewhat surprised to see this emerging from the box:
It obviously led a rather hard life before being harvested from somebody else’s obsolete flip phone and is definitely not “new”.
Not yet having a deep emotional attachment to the thing, I set it up for a capacity test:
Given a very light 100 mA load, it shows about the same capacity as the original battery in our phone:
Given the precarious contact arrangement, the glitches near the right end aren’t surprising.
The battery label claims a 900 mA·h rating, so both have nearly their nominal capacity at such a reduced load. In actual use, the phone has a low battery after a few hours of power-on time, far less than when it was new.
The seller promises a replacement. For all I know, there are no genuinely “new” batteries available for these phones.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
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9 responses to ““New” Phone Battery”
Maybe you can replace some of the cells.
I wish prismatic lithium cells had a few standard sizes & shapes, so you could actually buy replacement cells, but … noooo, they pack ’em into whatever space remains inside the thinnest possible case.
Batteryspace has a reasonable selection, although I’ve never tried to mix-n-match with the battery shells on hand.
Could you recharge via entanglement?
Got it: spin the bike in the garage and magically pump the phone! [grin]
I am so not into hub generators, as I loves me our Phil hubs.
Ed I am glad we share the same sense of humor.
I’ve had some luck with Batteries Plus, both retail and online. I have a spare battery for my LG flip phone…
FWIW, Amazon claims to have new ones for 14.99 (free shipping). Retailed by Accessory City Store.
I suspect they’ll send me the best-looking battery in their inventory, rather than a genuinely new battery, but at least they’ll have the chance to live up to the description.
B+ doesn’t know about ancient flippers and the Amazon sources likely sell exactly the same “new” batteries as the ones I already have, with Amazon, rather than eBay, prices.
Maybe I’m too cynical? It could happen …
My phone was more-or-less current when I got that spare battery from them. Used to get ’em from Radio Shack, my favorite destination for 1-2 pieces of components.
[…] / faster to buy third-party NP-FM50 packs directly from eBay or Amazon, but this way I know the cells aren’t complete crap and I get some Quality Shop Time™ out of the […]