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Speaking about batteries ... is it dangerous to keep old phones around? Could their batteries start to burn at some point? I mean when not using the phone at a

by TekMol 1y ago

Speaking about batteries ... is it dangerous to keep old phones around? Could their batteries start to burn at some point? I mean when not using the phone at all, just keeping it in a drawer, turned off.

haunter 1y ago
Yes, the battery can become swollen and explode
Filligree 1y ago
Even when a battery is completely drained in an electrical sense, it retains a lot of chemical energy that can be released if things go wrong. So an explosion is _less likely_ than for a battery actively in use, but not impossible. Lithium ion batteries aren’t collectibles.
- WillAdams 1y ago
  Yes, but they get used a lot in devices which folks consider to be collectible, e.g., Nintendo 3DS handhelds which were available in a sufficient variety of case designs that my son has at least 3....
  - dawnerd 1y ago
    Even in things you wouldn't even think about. Tiny lithium batteries in all sorts of things.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  >Even when a battery is completely drained in an electrical sense, it retains a lot of chemical energy that can be released if things go wrong. That's basically just saying "you can burn anything" but in words that are attrativce to the audiences biases. Yeah, there's a bit more to go wrong with a dead battery than the plastic and whatnot device it's in but if it can't ignite itself it can't ignite itself and that's more or less the end of the story.
  - benterix 1y ago
    Just a single anecdata: I bought a second-hand Xbox360 once[0] with two pads but use donly one for some months. One day I tried to use the other one but smelled the odor of burned plastic - for some reason the batteries caused a piece of the plastic melt. This single event made me a bit more cautious about batteries in general. There are decades of no accidents and then unexpectedly something like this happens. [0] Yest I still think Kinect was ahead of its time and I'm very sorry it got discontinued
    - rahimnathwani 1y ago
      Were these alkaline batteries? Perhaps some conductive debris had caused a short circuit?
  - Reubachi 1y ago
    Anecdotal story, but I don't "keep" old electronics anymore save for ones I know are in a fireproof container. My attic and furnished top floor room adjacent to it can on a bad day get to 110 without the attic fan on. Very old NE colonial on a hill getting full sun from sunrise to sunset. Items i cannot keep up there, as I have watched them explode or turn into puddles of goo: Aersol cans (oils, cleaners, sunscreen etc) Normal squeeze trigger bottles (IE, chemical cleaners, auto detailer) Tapes, adhesives Electronics
  - numpad0 1y ago
    Li-ion batteries release something like 3x its advertised capacity when lit on fire. IOW, the label capacity is like 1/3rd its worth as fuel(don't do this, it releases stuffs like HF). That's not "you can burn anything". 1: pp.28. https://www.crepim.fr/DOCS_CLIENT/Aircraft-FAA-Energy%20Density-Cell%20Chemistry-Commercial%2018650%20LIB%20Cells-Causes%20of%20Battery%20Failure-Lithium%20Ion%20Batteries.pdf https://www.crepim.fr/DOCS_CLIENT/Aircraft-FAA-Energy%20Dens...
bradlys 1y ago
Burning isn’t as likely. But I had my old iPhone 4 or 5S battery swell and destroy itself that way while sitting in temperature controlled storage for a couple years. I won’t be storing such items in combustible containers anymore even though the risk is pretty low and they mostly just swell.
Workaccount2 1y ago
No, it's not. We have billions and billions of old devices with ancient batteries laying around, pretty much every house in the developed world has at least one, more likely multiple, lithium batteries laying around dead for years. There is no need to do research or dig into it, the experiment has already been running for years in every house in the nation, and random battery fires are still rare enough to be news worthy. If you find a forbidden pillow (swelled battery pouch), dispose of it, but even those almost never convert to fire/explosion.
- faeyanpiraat 1y ago
  A more responsible answer would've been something along the lines of: There is a very small chance, but if you take the little time to responsibly dispose unused batteries every once in a while, then you do not even have to think about this.
  - Workaccount2 1y ago
    The chance is already so low that it is firmly in the "you don't even have to think about it" category. Stove tops cause 160,000 home fires a year, killing 135 people annually, but when was the last time you felt unsettled when looking at your stove? Lithium batteries are just prime fear porn for the media to run with. New and scary technology. But the statistics paint a wildly different picture.
  - cwillu 1y ago
    No, that would be a less responsible answer, not more.
AzzyHN 1y ago
It's unlikely, but not impossible. What's more likely is that they'll start to expand
parsimo2010 1y ago
Lithium batteries mostly burn when the devices are drawing significant current below the safe cutoff voltage. You can safely discharge a battery to zero chemical energy with a slow draw. They make discharge devices for batteries in RC cars and planes for this. Once the battery has lost enough performance you safely drain it and then dispose of it (not in the landfill because the chemicals are still toxic)- you don't want to leave it partially charged in case it gets punctured in the disposal process. Letting phone batteries drain naturally is pretty safe, because just leaving it in a low-power mode over time will cause it to self-drain at a pretty slow pace over several months. They should still be disposed of with electronics recycling so that the toxic stuff can be handled, but leaving a phone in a drawer is normally safe. Software bugs that try to turn the phone on into a high-power state right at the safety threshold are the biggest risks, or that you might try to turn it on yourself right at the safety threshold. Phone fires are typically from software bugs that fail to cut power at the safety threshold, either while a user is trying to squeeze out the last few percent of battery, or if they are in luggage and presumably jostled and buttons keep getting pushed.
philjohn 1y ago
They're not called "spicy pillows" for nothing[1] If they're not swelling, it's fine. If they're swelling, get them out of the house, preferaly into a metal bucket filled with sand. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/spicypillows/ https://www.reddit.com/r/spicypillows/
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

by TekMol 1y ago

haunter 1y ago

Yes, the battery can become swollen and explode

Filligree 1y ago

Even when a battery is completely drained in an electrical sense, it retains a lot of chemical energy that can be released if things go wrong. So an explosion is _less likely_ than for a battery actively in use, but not impossible. Lithium ion batteries aren’t collectibles.

WillAdams 1y ago
Yes, but they get used a lot in devices which folks consider to be collectible, e.g., Nintendo 3DS handhelds which were available in a sufficient variety of case designs that my son has at least 3....
- dawnerd 1y ago
  Even in things you wouldn't even think about. Tiny lithium batteries in all sorts of things.
potato3732842 1y ago
>Even when a battery is completely drained in an electrical sense, it retains a lot of chemical energy that can be released if things go wrong. That's basically just saying "you can burn anything" but in words that are attrativce to the audiences biases. Yeah, there's a bit more to go wrong with a dead battery than the plastic and whatnot device it's in but if it can't ignite itself it can't ignite itself and that's more or less the end of the story.
- benterix 1y ago
  Just a single anecdata: I bought a second-hand Xbox360 once[0] with two pads but use donly one for some months. One day I tried to use the other one but smelled the odor of burned plastic - for some reason the batteries caused a piece of the plastic melt. This single event made me a bit more cautious about batteries in general. There are decades of no accidents and then unexpectedly something like this happens. [0] Yest I still think Kinect was ahead of its time and I'm very sorry it got discontinued
  - rahimnathwani 1y ago
    Were these alkaline batteries? Perhaps some conductive debris had caused a short circuit?
- Reubachi 1y ago
  Anecdotal story, but I don't "keep" old electronics anymore save for ones I know are in a fireproof container. My attic and furnished top floor room adjacent to it can on a bad day get to 110 without the attic fan on. Very old NE colonial on a hill getting full sun from sunrise to sunset. Items i cannot keep up there, as I have watched them explode or turn into puddles of goo: Aersol cans (oils, cleaners, sunscreen etc) Normal squeeze trigger bottles (IE, chemical cleaners, auto detailer) Tapes, adhesives Electronics
- numpad0 1y ago
  Li-ion batteries release something like 3x its advertised capacity when lit on fire. IOW, the label capacity is like 1/3rd its worth as fuel(don't do this, it releases stuffs like HF). That's not "you can burn anything". 1: pp.28. https://www.crepim.fr/DOCS_CLIENT/Aircraft-FAA-Energy%20Density-Cell%20Chemistry-Commercial%2018650%20LIB%20Cells-Causes%20of%20Battery%20Failure-Lithium%20Ion%20Batteries.pdf https://www.crepim.fr/DOCS_CLIENT/Aircraft-FAA-Energy%20Dens...

bradlys 1y ago

Burning isn’t as likely. But I had my old iPhone 4 or 5S battery swell and destroy itself that way while sitting in temperature controlled storage for a couple years. I won’t be storing such items in combustible containers anymore even though the risk is pretty low and they mostly just swell.

Workaccount2 1y ago

No, it's not. We have billions and billions of old devices with ancient batteries laying around, pretty much every house in the developed world has at least one, more likely multiple, lithium batteries laying around dead for years. There is no need to do research or dig into it, the experiment has already been running for years in every house in the nation, and random battery fires are still rare enough to be news worthy. If you find a forbidden pillow (swelled battery pouch), dispose of it, but even those almost never convert to fire/explosion.

faeyanpiraat 1y ago
A more responsible answer would've been something along the lines of: There is a very small chance, but if you take the little time to responsibly dispose unused batteries every once in a while, then you do not even have to think about this.
- Workaccount2 1y ago
  The chance is already so low that it is firmly in the "you don't even have to think about it" category. Stove tops cause 160,000 home fires a year, killing 135 people annually, but when was the last time you felt unsettled when looking at your stove? Lithium batteries are just prime fear porn for the media to run with. New and scary technology. But the statistics paint a wildly different picture.
- cwillu 1y ago
  No, that would be a less responsible answer, not more.

AzzyHN 1y ago

It's unlikely, but not impossible. What's more likely is that they'll start to expand

parsimo2010 1y ago

Lithium batteries mostly burn when the devices are drawing significant current below the safe cutoff voltage. You can safely discharge a battery to zero chemical energy with a slow draw. They make discharge devices for batteries in RC cars and planes for this. Once the battery has lost enough performance you safely drain it and then dispose of it (not in the landfill because the chemicals are still toxic)- you don't want to leave it partially charged in case it gets punctured in the disposal process. Letting phone batteries drain naturally is pretty safe, because just leaving it in a low-power mode over time will cause it to self-drain at a pretty slow pace over several months. They should still be disposed of with electronics recycling so that the toxic stuff can be handled, but leaving a phone in a drawer is normally safe. Software bugs that try to turn the phone on into a high-power state right at the safety threshold are the biggest risks, or that you might try to turn it on yourself right at the safety threshold. Phone fires are typically from software bugs that fail to cut power at the safety threshold, either while a user is trying to squeeze out the last few percent of battery, or if they are in luggage and presumably jostled and buttons keep getting pushed.

philjohn 1y ago

They're not called "spicy pillows" for nothing[1] If they're not swelling, it's fine. If they're swelling, get them out of the house, preferaly into a metal bucket filled with sand. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/spicypillows/ https://www.reddit.com/r/spicypillows/

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]