Real or Fake? Trying to Replace my iPhone Battery in Shenzhen, China By Strange Parts

My trusty iPhone 7 is dying I bought it like a year or two ago at the Apple store in Hong Kong And its noon now and the battery is down to 10% So I gotta replace it Now I could take it back to the Apple Store And they would replace it for like US$ 49 Which is less than it used to be But if you're here in Shenzhen China as you'll soon see That's a terrible price Shenzhen is arguably the cell phone repair capital of the world And boy, do they have batteries So I'm off the markets We're gonna go find a battery And I got two main questions I need to figure out The first is how do I know if a battery is any good And the second is kind of related which is how do I know who battery is genuine I don't really know the answer to either one of these questions But we're gonna find out I'd like to think iFixit for sponsoring this video more in that at the end But for now, let's go find some batteries ♪ Hello(Chinese) Hello(Chinese) Looking too expensive Hello Hello It's expensive though. Yeah, very high price Hello You speak some English (Ohh You can speak Chinese) Little bit ,Yi dian dian (一点点，"Little bit" in Chinese) Thank You, Xie xie ni (谢谢你，"Thank you" in Chinese) If not, I will rub one for you So just about every one of these battery booths seems to have some sort of battery testers They're using to test whether the battery is good before they sell it to me I think I gotta track one of those down for myself Okay, so you've got cycle count here and then design capacity So this is like and then this like unplugs here? That's double USB RANDOM WRITE CYCLE NUMBER Press this button to set it back to zero Long press for 2 seconds to write data Okay So go down? Okay, okay When the number is changing... Yeah, it seems good (It can also test... ) Yeah, I think this is good So I need I need something that will test yeah both copies and original This one copy And original All right. Yes, let's get this Yeah, yeah, okay, we got all the pieces ♪ Got my hand full of batteries I've gone through and labeled all of these with which booth they were from So that I can match it up with what they said Whether they said it was original or not And then how much they cost And I got my battery tester I also got two NOHON batteries off of Taobao Someone on Twitter tipped me off to this. Thank you This one is a normal one Same capacity as usual on an iPhone This one is a MAX and it has a higher capacity than the original iPhone batteries So I thought I would get this, check to see is that capacity actually real And see if we can figure it out why is it bigger than the one Apple makes Is it heavier? Is it physical size bigger? I don't know Okay So here's the boards that plug in This one you plug in via the cable I think these are big resistors to do load testing for like discharging a battery We got three boards and then just a charger and cable here We've got 4G through X iPhones there (Battery brands in China names the 4's battery as 4G, 6S as 6GS on model, don't know meanings -- Subtitler) This is for USB and a Lightning jack testing or like cable testing at that and then This is get watches and iPads connect testing board Connect battery.

So this one cost 48 RMB And she said it was original You can plug this thing in like so And it will tell you whether it's original or not It'll tell you how many times its charged What it's (designed capacity) and what the actual capacity is in mAh Battery life? Oh, maybe it's just What percentage is full capacity over design capacity of it? That's it She said this was original and tester says original And it was 48 Kuai (RMB) which is about $7 And so you can do a couple things You can test charging It's charging it about 500 mA And then the full capacity changes a little bit when we charge or discharge Okay, so let's stop charging Okay. So now it's drawing 300 mA So this is going down and I don't notice sometimes the full capacity shifts a little bit I think what it's doing is It's testing how much current it's drawing compared to the voltage drop And it's trying to figure out what is... Okay there it goes, it went down to 2013 mAh So it's figuring out what is the capacity of the battery Based on how much current is drawing versus what voltage drop And I would imagine the longer you do this the more accurate it gets So now once you've figured that out Then you can hit LIFE and it will read how much life there is out of the current battery But if you hold LIFE down You can reset it So the cycle count is how many times the battery has been charged You can either reset that to zero... like that Or you can hold it down and it will write some random small number to it So that's to make it look like it is a new battery But not a brand new battery or a brand new battery that has never been charged if you hit zero Pretty interesting, so it makes it a lot more tricky to figure out If you're buying batteries on the open market What their current status is So number two Was expensive it, was 55 and they said that the cable this part is original, but this part is a The battery itself the cells were we're new ones Okay, so this is copy I guess it means it's not original but they didn't tell us that It seems reasonable Right. The capacity is reasonable Alright, let's test LIFE 100% Mean, could you be doing anything really tricky in this logic to change these numbers maybe? OK number three This one is interesting This is an aftermarket brand battery DORAYMI Okay.

This also says copy 1:1 so we would expect that It's not labeled as an original apple battery Full of capacity is much higher than we would expect Discharging right now and we'll see if the capacity drops But this seems to be like a pretty decent battery I think you'd have to put a lot of charges through it Charge it discharge it charge it discharge it to really get the full test? Yeah, it seems it seems reasonable Let's see what life says: 80% Don't know what that means but I feel like 100 is a good number Number four. Okay, they said this one is original It is original, battery tester says it's original anyway Battery life 100% Now when I bought the tester She did say that this tester could tell the difference Between like just an original cable and an original cell And I'm not quite sure how that works But this must be fully original. I don't know Surprise it has a cycle count of zero if it's really fully original But maybe they wiped it And do LIFE This one they also said was original But it was much cheaper it was only 30 RMB First non-zero cycle count Full capacity is a little less than designed capacity Okay. This is kind of what I would expect for a used battery Let's try LIFE, 100% So the last battery I was trying to find more aftermarket batteries Like the NOHON and the DORAYMI I approached the lady and said I want one without the logo She dutifully scrubbed off the logo on this And Apple logo. She's rubbed it off With a complex set it looked like an eraser and some solvents And so this one now does not have an Apple logo Which I guess is you know, strictly speaking what I asked for Okay, and it says copy I think she told me it wasn't original I think based on at least the tester These batteries are in pretty good condition all considering but a wide range of prices At least what I can test with this tester It doesn't seem like there's a lot of difference in quality So definitely some room to bargain I kind of had a feeling that like fair prices from for batteries in the markets was about 30 RMB But I wanted to get a variety of things and people didn't seem to interested in bargaining on price for one.

So I don't sweat that stuff too much It's not worth damaging relationships and pissing people off to argue over a dollar Okay, so let's let's look at life here 100 All right, so that is all of the batteries that I bought in the market Now I want to check out the NOHON batteries So I'm gonna start with the just normal one What I found on Taobao was this like complete kits So it's got all the tools Six month warranty They seem like they are the same weight I did manage to dig a scale up later here This is the NOHON max Here is the NOHON This is heavier Here's one of the batteries in the market Huh NOHON original battery that is different than copy 1:1 I wonder if that means they're making their own cable here And it's not the battery manufacturer we were seeing before It's SUNWODA which is new But the capacity is right, no cycle count Huh? That's interesting, battery level 50% I don't understand that So this is the this is the special one This is the one that is bigger than label capacity of an original iPhone battery Non-original BAT. Okay, we expect that Wow, look at that capacity Okay. Well at least the testers claims, it's the right thing Let's try discharging it So we can see the voltage going down here Alright, so let's test, LIFE: 50% The next thing I would like to do Is crack open my phone which has been backing up for the past hour or two And run the battery tester on the battery that's in there And let's see how many cycles it has and how bad it is ♪ Man these original phones are really well sealed on that gasket around the screen Imma have to use some hot air ♪ This is a little bit of a pain These battery strips are prone to breaking So there the idea is they're super stretchy and You stretch them out and that undoes the adhesive But you really don't want gonna them break because then you have to go prying stuff So sometimes people use a little heat to heat up the bottom of the phone I just gonna pull it slowly AW NO! That's what I wanted to avoid Dang it So get it out is a little more risky now Let's go up to the other one No good So now we heat up the back and trying pry the battery out Now I only wanna use plastic tools I really don't want to puncture this battery with metal tool Because then it might blow up on me and that's no good Hear that sound It's a good sound that how you want it to sound Okay, that's what's supposed to happen One out one to go TADA!! Whoa, look at that. Let's throw it on tester Whoa, 725 cycles That's crazy The capacity is definitely lower than what it should be But it's only like 85%? That's better than I would have guessed Wonder if there's something else going on with my phone And the manufacturers HUAPU and it's very charged When you change your battery, it should not be as charged Okay, let's try discharging it I'm surprised that this is not like 50% All right so let's stop this for a minute And I just want to see what LIFE this is 60 The question is what one should I put in my phone And I'm not sure I have a really clear answer Okay. This one's pretty good I like this one the best right now And then the NOHON's I mean I could just put one in there... I put in the MAX Feel like I should do that I'm gonna try the MAX Well, let's test it first.

Let's see if the phone boots All right, I mean it seems to work so I turn the phone back off And put some battery strips in it, and I'm close back up Take one of these two off It seems like sticking to the pink. So I'm gonna leave the pink on So you take one side off And then you line it up on the battery So that the black strips overhang the edge So right where the black and the white separate You do that on the edge of the battery And then you peel off the blue part here And you wrap that up around the edge like that And then you finally pull this off gently Make sure these are stuck on Try and get it to stay stuck on And then you want to really line this up carefully Because you want to make sure the plug goes in So go in and good to go Oh right, gaskets I think you have to do this before you put the screen on Well, that's not perfect I don't think it'll ever be perfectly waterproof again But uh, it's better than nothing Okay looks good to me Think that's it. So I have a new battery But what did we learn along the way Uh.. my old battery was messed up but not as much as I thought it was You can indeed get a battery that is bigger than the original battery, uhh, higher capacity. There's clearly a wide variety of replacement batteries You can buy ranging from you know, aftermarket batteries like NOHON and DORAYMI That you know are BRANDED something different to ORIGINAL Apple batteries that are available for sale Varying states of used and new to COPIES And that say Apple on them that may or may not have some original Apple electronics with new cells in them.

So I mean this kind of maps on to my previous mental model of China and and manufacturing Which is that you can kinda get any quality you want Under any brand name you want? And you'll pay accordingly for it And it is up to you the consumer to figure out what quality you'd like What advice would I give because I imagine that a lot of you are gonna ask me "Scotty how should I replace my battery? " "I sure to buying $150 battery tester?" I'm not sure that you have a whole lot of options in terms of figuring out Which batteries are completely legit? I think you know probably the best thing is to buy batteries from reputable sellers That you know have a reputation to uphold And test their batteries properly on a proper tester If you're buying batteries from random sellers on AliExpress with unknown histories Then buyer beware I think the other conclusion and I hope you guys came away from from this as well Is that the actual process of swapping the battery is super easy If I wasn't filming it, it probably would have taken me 10~15 minutes at most Including breaking the battery strips the the glue strips So I definitely would suggest do this on your own I don't really see a lot of reason if you're the least bit technically inclined To take your phone to the Apple store unless it's still under warranty to have a battery replaced Yeah, this is something that most people can do I think it's really pretty straightforward So I was just gonna leave this video here But I didn't feel comfortable with that Because I knew a bunch of you were gonna ask me "Scotty I just want to replace my battery. I don't want to go on a crazy market AliExpress Adventure what battery should I buy just tell me which one" Based on the work that I've done thus far I didn't feel like I had a battery that I could point out And be like "Buy this one, It's the good one" And it was really bugging me So I talked to my friends over at iFixit and I think we might have an answer for you Just in the interest of full transparency They are sponsoring this video But they put together a battery kit which includes not only just the battery But also all the tools and supplies you need to swap it out I asked him to send over one of their kits Because I didn't want to recommend it unless I tested it out myself And they sent it over super rush in time for me to finish this video However I didn't get this until I had to be out of the apartment If you don't know what that's about, watch the last video But the hints the different background So let's open this thing up So it got tools Not strapped in. Awesome So it has all the tools you could possibly need for this Very cool and then Screen gasket battery strips The big question is how is the battery? So it is an iFixit branded battery Which is what we would expect (??) iPhone 7 It's got the right specs Most importantly, let's put this on the tester So we see original 1:1,iPhone 7, cycle count zero, I know we do expect Full capacity 2003 mAh So slightly above the design capacity which gives it 102% And let's see. Let's test life here, 100. That's good So at least according to the tester This is a pretty decent battery out of the ones we've tested iFixit did say they test all of the batteries at their headquarters on test equipment like this now Now this is an aftermarket battery, it wasn't made by Apple Similar to the NOHON and the DORAYMI batteries But iFixit claims that it's made to the same quality that Apple makes their batteries I've also really enjoyed working with them past far They're super nice people They have incredible customer support And I actually use their repair guides as my canonical reference Whenever I do any of my iPhone projects They've also committed even though Apple has raised their price back up from $29 to $49 to replace a battery But they'll keep their battery kits at $29 or below Until the end of this year 2019 Now that's no five dollar battery from the Chinese cell phone markets But they're backing with one year warranty So I know if you have any problems, they'll do right by you If you want to order one of their battery kits Or you just want to use their free repair guides to swap out a battery you got somewhere else You can find links both of those in the description So what are you waiting for Whether you buy one of the iFixit kits Or whether you buy a battery online or get it some other way Go replace your iPhone battery It really is easier than you think and your phone will run a lot better for it I'm Scotty with strange parts If you enjoyed this adventure Hit that subscribe button down below and that little bell icon next to it So you're notified of future videos Until then stay tuned for more adventures I'll see you next time.

Source : Strange Parts