Earlier this week, we advised readers who may have old Galaxy phones lying around to check for swollen batteries. Together with our colleagues at GalaxyClub, we did the same and collectively verified over 100 Galaxy phones lying around in our office and drawers at home. The results are finally in, and they might surprise you. It surely left us scratching our heads.
For a bit of background, in case you missed the news, several high-profile YouTubers and vloggers recently brought an issue to light. They found several Galaxy phones in their collection to have suffered from swollen batteries. As yet, there's no explanation as to why this appears to be happening.
We did our part and checked roughly 50 Galaxy phones, while our friends at GalaxyClub verified around 60 devices. In total, that's more than 100 old mid-range and high-end Galaxy phones verified at our end, and surprisingly enough, none have exhibited a swollen battery. GalaxyClub found one older Galaxy S4 model (out of several) to have a thicker battery, but nothing like the ones you may have seen ballooning in photos and videos shared by other Samsung collectors online.
So, what is the conclusion?
Truth be told, we don't know enough about Samsung's engineering and chemistry to provide a clear answer as to why some batteries are swelling while others don't. Perhaps we were lucky, or perhaps the conditions in which we stored these devices guarantee a longer life. We kept these devices in an environment with moderate temperatures (around 20 degrees celsius) and plenty of ventilation.
It's also worth noting that we didn't leave some of our devices uncharged for longer than a year, on average. Either way, we don't claim that aging Samsung phones don't have a battery issue or otherwise — only that we seem to have been lucky enough to not suffer from it.
Whatever the case may be, it's difficult to pinpoint the exact cause, and Samsung might have just as hard of a time determining the culprit as everyone else. It all seems quite random, and in the end, all we can say is that we're happy none of our Galaxy phones have suffered from this problem. We'll keep you posted if we find out more or if Samsung releases a statement on the matter, so stay tuned, and make sure you check the batteries of your old Galaxy phones if you have any stored up somewhere.
