This post is an update of the second part of my Moto server series: https://lemmy.zip/post/72142441

Rumor has it that keeping an 8-year-old phone permanently plugged in with its equally ancient Li-ion battery might not be the greatest idea ever conceived.

Some even claimed that a phone needs a battery to work.

Very negative people.

Anyway, I removed it.

Pettyl did not care.

nginx: UP
PHP-FPM: UP
MariaDB: UP
WordPress: UP
cloudflared: UP
sshd: UP

The battery is currently sitting next to the phone, contributing absolutely nothing to the project.

Pettyl is now running entirely from USB power, at around 37°C, while continuing to serve the website like this is completely normal.

There is, however, one tiny detail the haters may enjoy:

It can’t boot without the battery.

So the official Pettyl disaster recovery procedure is now:

1. Insert battery
2. Boot Pettyl
3. Connect USB power
4. Remove battery
5. Pretend this is enterprise infrastructure

The battery is no longer a battery.

It is the starter motor.

I see no problems with this architecture.

Anyway, Part 3 is going great.

What did you put in place of the battery? nothing or a cap? i tried this with a moto g6 but there is not enough power delivered through its own usb port so i have to use a 5volt source+capacitor connected to the bms i saved from the battery.

I did not need to fake battery presence, just needed the battery as a starter, once the phone is booted just removed the battery.

Although the real test is yet to come, I have to leave it like this for a day or two, to see if it powers off when CPU spikes…

Awesome! Keep us updated!

Lol thank you so much, and I absolutely love what you said: “MOTO ÜBER ALLES”

I want to use it on the website instead of the boring copyright text lol, if it’s cool with you, I’ll even credit you!

My old Galaxy S5 would work without the battery, including bootup. So it's not entirely unexpected that other phones could also do so. I would say I can't imagine who would take the time out out of their day to just talk out their ass and claim something like this wouldn't work without trying it first. Except then I remember this is the internet, and people do that all the time.

Regardless, good on you for making this all work!

Hahaha, thank you for defending me! 😄

Just to clarify though, the “they said it couldn’t be done” part was mostly me being ironic and unnecessarily dramatic for the post lol. The comments on this whole project have actually been overwhelmingly positive and helpful.

People here are the reason I even tried some of this stuff in the first place.

But I genuinely appreciate you having my back. And the S5 being able to cold boot without a battery is really interesting — Pettyl unfortunately needs its battery as a starter motor. 😂

Since when does a phone need a battery to run? It needs power, doesn’t matter where the power comes from.

Aye aye, captain🫡

well ACKSHUALLY 🤓☝️

Unfortunately Pettyl is stupid enough to need the battery to boot, but smart enough to forget about it immediately afterwards.

I don’t make the rules, I just host WordPress on an 8-year-old Motorola.

Since their burst power consumption started using more current than a capacitor in the charging circuitry could provide

Yeah, what he said. I was just about to say the exact same thing…

And we’re live!

Awww... I remember back when batteries were removable. Good times.

Damn, I wish they still made phones with a removable battery

I used to keep a charged spare on me. And this was back when a phones battery life was like 3-7 days.

Stop making phones thinner God dammit. I don't want a thinner phone. I want longer battery life and a removable battery so I can fucking double the shitty longer battery life I get.

About the not booting issue: What if you soldered a fitting power supply directly to the phones battery pins? Is this a horrible idea? I don't know. Or 3d-print a power supply to dummy battery adapter...

Nice.

There is often a check for battery that is effectively a check of resistance between sense and ground. Looks like that battery is labelled, you might be able to bodge a resistor between sense and ground on the phone and get it to boot without the battery?

Here I was thinking you should add a capacitor so there is some juice if the phone draws more than the USB can supply. Maybe even a super cap so you get a more robust drain discharge cycles.

Update! Apparently removing the battery also removes half the CPU lol.

I’ll keep you posted!

Usually phones have 3 pins on the back for the battery, one of them - usually the one at the center - reads the battery resistance, so if you add a resistor between that pin and another pin, it will fool the phone to belive it has a beattery

Edit: spelling

I'm currently reading this on my nearly 8 year old phone. I guess when I finally get round to replacing it I'll have a new server! Sweet

And a big enough pocket to hold it securely, no matter what gender clothing you wear!

Remember the days when hou could just pop the back off and take the battery out?

Here here!

Anything made to be run from battery can work fine without one. Worst case scenario requires you to spoof some I²C communication to properly emulate a battery, but most devices and batteries are far dumber than that. DC is DC, and sometimes you just need to graft something on top for the other pins.

Source: My old laptops charging circuit failed, so I soldered the charger onto the battery pins instead. Then I replaced the actual battery with an Adafruit Itsybitsy 32u4 (because that what I happened to have available) that emulated the battery status of "Charging, nothing to see here, move along" and sent it via I²C

There, there. It's "hear, hear."

Still have my LG Optimus on Android 2.x somewhere. With 512MB RAM I dunno what to do with it outside of a clock display, but I have it (and a spare battery).

Any idea what ohm value would be best?

That's kinda hard when women's pants often have no pockets, fake pockets, or pockets so small they're functionally useless.

put one lead from the battery on a transistor so you can disconnect it with a little ESP or something when you go to power cycle it. Or even just hold down a button to connect it while you plug the phone back in.

Nope, i think the ideal one changes with the phone manufacter, you should try to test the battery ohm value and use that one

I’ve run laptops without a battery, constantly plugged in. I assume this is not a fire hazard.

No more than any other electrical device.

The charging cirtuit that also tries to guess the battery percentage can be the problem. The 'guessed percentage' will depending on the chip and programming go down even if you solder in a dc power supply. When it hits the 0% it will shutdown.

Thats the case for some smart phones.

nice phone! all of my phones i tested (with replacable battery) refuse to work without battery attached and almost instantly turns off if i ever detach it while running, even with power connected.

Didn't EU pass a regulation regarding that? If I recall correctly all portable devices sold in the EU after February will will need to have a user replaceable battery.

Awesome! I will try it too!

When the battery in my wall mounted android tablet swelled i had to add a 10k resistor to the sense line, inject the 5V directly into the battery port and add a few capacitors to get it to work. But at least it won't cause a fire now.

I used to keep a charged spare on me.

There's at least one Chinese brand that has smartphone with hot-swappable battery: https://rugone.net/products/xever-8

Removable battery. Swap within 2 minutes for zero interruption. After 2 minutes, the device enters a 60-second safety lock-out to protect your data.

Unfortunately, software from these brands tends to be shit. I feel like they just outsource it to the cheapest company. Especially following this recent thing:

As of March 4, Sophos X-Intercept telemetry listed over 500 unique compromised Android devices across nearly 50 models. The devices were mostly low-cost models produced by the following manufacturers: Allview, BLU, Dcode, DOOGEE, Gigaset, Gionee, Lava, and Ulefone. The list did not include Alldocube devices, despite Kaspersky reportedly observing Keenadu affect that manufacturer as well.

Source - Sophos
Report from Kaspersky

I once soldered a usb wire into the terminals where the battery of my moto g4 used to be, and it kept crashing on boot. So I added a large capacitor right across the terminals, and even with that and being at 5V (on a 5 amp supply), some apps still overloaded it and got it to crash.

Would love if there was some package that just attached like a battery with a usb wire coming out the bottom, that could supply any spikes if the usb provided enough average power.

DO NOT skip step 5. It is VERY IMPORTANT.

How do I sign up for the pateron?

Where, where?

I just got a fairphone 6. Removable battery!

I just have to say, I really enjoy your writing style. Fun project, great post!

Well you better go catch it!

Remember bezels?

That's perfectly fine. The only issue is that it may limit performance on some laptops.