I'm divorcing Samsung; it's complicated

[Connecteur]

I learned to live with the loss of the removable battery, and I might have lived with the loss of the headphone jack. But the loss of an expandable memory slot, the termination of the Samsung Cloud, and a host of other user-unfriendly actions has put a halt to me upgrading my Samsung smartphones.  They still offer some of those features on their lower-end phones, but I still feel railroaded as a loyal customer.  Not so loyal anymore.

The other dirty trick is the way they overcharge their batteries to 4.4 volts, which causes the battery to fail prematurely. No solution for this problem exists, short of rooting the phone.

I'll get by for a few years, keeping the battery charge level below 85%, and forgoing the system updates. I may consider rooting it and doing my own updates.

[SiliconWizard]

The other dirty trick is the way they overcharge their batteries to 4.4 volts, which causes the battery to fail prematurely. No solution for this problem exists, short of rooting the phone.

Do you have proof of that?

[Solares]

OP, I feel your frustration.

However, your options are very limited. You could go to a Chinese brand phone where it could be  silently be communicating with some very dubious servers.

[John B]

I still have a Galaxy S5, it has gone through 3 batteries as it does appear that the phone will excessively charge the battery when left on a charger. I used to leave the phone connected to a USB port most of the time keeping the battery fully charged, and the first 2 batteries swelled up. Third battery I make sure to take it off the charger which has resulted in the last battery outlasting the first 2. It's capacity is lower, as it's a non OEM battery, and it outlasted the first 2 genuine batteries.

[Connecteur]

For the type of lithium ion battery that Samsung uses, 4.2V is considered a full charge.  The battery monitor app i installed tells me that the battery is at 4.4V at indicated full charge.  It has an alarm which I've set to 85% charge level, which is my queue to disconnect the charger.

Other sources tell me that keeping the charge level below 85% will extend battery longevity by 211%.  I have two Samsung tablets of similar age to my phone, and in the menus, there is a setting to allow the battery to indicate 100% charge when it's actually at 85%, which is the "battery-saver" feature.  The same operating system on my phone offers no such option.  Another reason I'm divorcing Samsung.

[Alex Eisenhut]

Here's a nice hackable phone. Cheap too.

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/184017461797?hash=item2ad84ba225:g:Hh8AAOSwe-tdu4MF

[thm_w]

For the type of lithium ion battery that Samsung uses, 4.2V is considered a full charge.  The battery monitor app i installed tells me that the battery is at 4.4V at indicated full charge.  It has an alarm which I've set to 85% charge level, which is my queue to disconnect the charger.

Are you sure of that, some chemistries will charge up to 4.35 or 4.4V.
https://secondlifestorage.com/index.php?threads/li-ion-4-35v-how-much-do-we-lose-by-charging-it-at-4-20v.5543/

Do we know exactly what chemistry samsung uses in the battery?

[Connecteur]

For the type of lithium ion battery that Samsung uses, 4.2V is considered a full charge.  The battery monitor app i installed tells me that the battery is at 4.4V at indicated full charge.  It has an alarm which I've set to 85% charge level, which is my queue to disconnect the charger.

Are you sure of that, some chemistries will charge up to 4.35 or 4.4V.
https://secondlifestorage.com/index.php?threads/li-ion-4-35v-how-much-do-we-lose-by-charging-it-at-4-20v.5543/

Do we know exactly what chemistry samsung uses in the battery?

I'm sure it's safe to say that charging to the maximum voltage will result in a shorter lifespan than charging to 85% capacity.  My two Samsung tablets say exactly that in the battery-saver mode.  For what it's worth, I used to get 3-4 years out of a smartphone battery.  My latest Samsung S9 battery popped out of the case after just over a year. 
I'm not citing any sources for what is common knowledge.

[Halcyon]

Samsung (like others) did go through a period of bad batteries, but that was years ago. I have never heard of them deliberately over-charging their batteries (that would be pointless). Samsung is a premium brand. I doubt they would be deliberately doing anything of the sort. It would be too damaging to their reputation.

Premature or accelerated battery wear is almost always down to the user. Leaving a phone on charge indefinitely won't be enough to do it over the normal expected life of the device. The most common forms of battery abuse I come across are people leaving phones in hot places (cars, direct sunlight) and physical damage caused by drops. After two years of normal use (for most people that's 1 discharge/charge cycle per day), there will be a noticeable drop in battery capacity and device runtime. That's just the nature of battery chemistry. Partially charging doesn't completely solve the problem either, wear still occurs. If you're still getting 80% capacity out of a phone that's a few years old, you're doing pretty well.

Speaking of battery voltages in phones, I just checked mine. I have a Motorola which appears to take 4.46v when on a regular USB power supply. How much of that is actually going to the battery is unknown. At 100% (and with the phone/display on), the battery voltage settles to about 4.33v. I trust the engineers who developed all the charging circuity and batteries to know what they are doing, I just use the device as it was intended.

[Connecteur]

When you follow all manufacturer's recommendations, that demonstrates trust in the product.
I've lost that trust in Samsung. That's the point.

[MrMobodies]

... the loss of the removable battery.... loss of an expandable memory slot... They still offer some of those features on their lower-end phones....

I'd rather have a low end phone where it offers a memory expansion slot for convenient control over the contents that I put in there and removable battery than having to mess about taking it apart let alone trying to find a replacement battery when they decide to stop making it from a reputable company.

[thm_w]

I'm sure it's safe to say that charging to the maximum voltage will result in a shorter lifespan than charging to 85% capacity.  My two Samsung tablets say exactly that in the battery-saver mode.  For what it's worth, I used to get 3-4 years out of a smartphone battery.  My latest Samsung S9 battery popped out of the case after just over a year. 

No one is questioning that lower terminal voltage results in greater lifespan.

I'm not citing any sources for what is common knowledge.

So then you don't know.
You stated 4.2V is a full charge, and for some battery chemistries that is not true, 4.3 or 4.35V is a full charge.

Wonder how accurate that readback voltage is, should be fairly accurate.

[langwadt]

I still have a Galaxy S5, it has gone through 3 batteries

in how many years?

[ve7xen]

I divorced them years and years ago after they refused a warranty repair for a bad USB socket because my phone had the bootloader unlock fuses burned. Completely bogus justification.

So not only am I no longer buying expensive smartphones from them, but no expensive TVs, home stereo equipment, computers or anything else. Smart one Samsung.

[NiHaoMike]

Check if there's a setting to "protect battery" like what my Tab S7 does.

[John B]

I still have a Galaxy S5, it has gone through 3 batteries

in how many years?

The first battery that came with the phone lasted a few years and I had no qualms about it's lifespan.

The second was another genuine unit and it lasted maybe a year. I remember being peeved about it.

That's when the overcharging issue occurred to me. The current battery is the non genuine one, and while the capacity between charges is noticeably lower, even when it was new, it has lasted me to the present day.

[SiliconWizard]

Since there actually *are* 4.35V to 4.4V LiPo batteries, we can only assume that's what Samsung used here. It's almost impossible they have used regular 4.2V LiPo and charged them to 4.4V. LiPo batteries are not that tolerant. That would not just shorten their life to 1 year of use, but much less, with possibly bulging and bad stuff happening.

Which is not to say that some of the 4.4V batteries they used were not defective in some way. But not because Samsung incorrectly charges 4.2V ones to 4.4V. That's impossible to believe. They would just have made their mobile phone business unit explode with such a decision.

So, those batteries are commonly called "HV LiPo", sometimes coined LiHv. You can find more info there, for instance: https://www.grepow.com/page/high-voltage-battery.html

[MrMobodies]

I divorced them years and years ago after they refused a warranty repair for a bad USB socket because my phone had the bootloader unlock fuses burned. Completely bogus justification.

Did you unlock it? If you did it still sounds to me like a complete joke.

I came across something that I believe they had been doing similar with a few of their televisions with the led back lighting past the nominal voltages and in 3d more it seemed even higher with the voltages stated on the power supply but I was still confused as there seems to be single and double strings/arrays. They have a very short lifespan mostly 2 to 3 years according to the reviews and the best warrantly I get is 6 months for the leds. Now I don't know whether it was unintentional of deliberately.

On my Samsung J5 phone I get this little text on startup: Set Warranty Bit: Kernel"

Now I didn't buy the phone it was given to me and set it up in the way and I am happy with it for the few things I use it for.
Making calls, capture pictures and videos to which I use a tool that require the rooting:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/app-2-0-1-root-samba-filesharing-server-for-android-play-dev-builds.2803452/#post-53869540
https://samba-filesharing.appedia.net

Nice and easily, I take pictures, turn on the wifi on the phone, open a folder and copy them across.

I don't wish to use a stupid "app" to upload the pictures to some "cloud" just to download them again which I might as well use a cable.

One good reason I don't buy new phones is because of this:

I just replaced the battery of a 3-odd year old tablet a few days ago. It's often a major pain, as the old battery is often hard to remove due to the adhesive getting extremely hard to remove after 3 years. (Using hot air to dissolve the adhesive may help, but I don't feel comfortable heating up a large LiPo battery... )

The last time i brought a new phone was in 2010 from a shop. I can't remember the name, could have been a Nokia, had a keypad, colour screen, standard looking replaceable lithium battery and had a lot of unwanted gadgets in the background that didn't really interfere with what I was doing but I switched them off anyway and it worked well. I think I got that for £40 and it came with a £15 preloaded Vodafone sim. It was basic and did everything I wanted it to do with no annoyance or disappointments and no excessive animations that I am finding these new phones..