This is a terrible question. I’m neither an electrical engineer nor a chemist, which makes this all the more clumsy of me for asking it.
Every swelling lithium battery I’ve experienced over the years has come from Intel Macs and other devices (such as phones and other makers’ laptops).
The odd thing, however (minding how most of the batteries within iBooks and most PowerBooks are a bunch of cylindrical 18650 cells joined in a series), is not only have I never run across many, if any mentions of 17-inch PowerBook G4 batteries swelling up, but also, in thinking about my own 17-inch G4, the almost-dead, OEM battery (which has been with said laptop since it was assembled in a factory, in Shanghai, in March 2006) has neither swelled nor has it ever died completely.
In fact, for the nearly four years I’ve had it running, a fraction of the power coming from the OEM A1149 battery has remained the same — discharging almost the same amount of power now as it did in early 2019 when I bought the laptop. Were the components inside the 17-inch battery a bunch of 18650 form factor cells, then I would describe its behaviour as if, say, seven out of eight cells were dead, but one remained healthy (Coconut Battery shows about 12 per cent of the original capacity, give or take, and I can unplug it and run with battery-only, even though at 12 per cent, it amounts to having a kind of built-in UPS and not much more).
We know the battery construction inside the 17-inch PowerBooks had to be thinner than what a 18650 cell, on its side, could accommodate. As far as I’m aware, the 17-inch models have a layered cell design, much like batteries found in most complex electronics since the aughts.
And yet… the hecking thing, despite being connected to the mains constantly, has never swelled up or altogether stopped holding a charge, much as a lot of OEM and replacement batteries are wont to do with other gear — including Intel Macs with both user-replaceable and glued batteries. It’s also flatter, on both sides, than southeast Texas, Nebraska, or even an iced-over pond.
I also have a 17-inch aluminium MacBook Pro from ’08, so although it’s a different battery size, it’s basically the same thickness and form factor as what’s in the 17-inch PowerBooks. It would also be a layered Li-ion battery. I’ve had that MBP running for less than two years, and it’s already almost through with its second replacement battery (both of which, unfortunately, weren’t Apple-branded, and both having that vexatious trait of abruptly shutting off the system around 35–40 per cent of alleged charge remaining).
Although I know quality control can explain away much of the failure rate on third-party MBP batteries, it doesn’t give one much to go on when it comes to the PowerBook battery not swelling — or in having not run across many, if any user reports of swollen PowerBook 17-inch batteries.
So I feel like I’m either missing data (or even anecdata), or else there’s something fundamentally different with how Li-ion layered batteries are managed by the built-in power management board within PowerBook 17-inch batteries.
Can anyone, particularly anyone with some applied insight on chemo-electrical processes, charge management, and modern Li-ion battery tech, shed some light here?
Cheers!
Every swelling lithium battery I’ve experienced over the years has come from Intel Macs and other devices (such as phones and other makers’ laptops).
The odd thing, however (minding how most of the batteries within iBooks and most PowerBooks are a bunch of cylindrical 18650 cells joined in a series), is not only have I never run across many, if any mentions of 17-inch PowerBook G4 batteries swelling up, but also, in thinking about my own 17-inch G4, the almost-dead, OEM battery (which has been with said laptop since it was assembled in a factory, in Shanghai, in March 2006) has neither swelled nor has it ever died completely.
In fact, for the nearly four years I’ve had it running, a fraction of the power coming from the OEM A1149 battery has remained the same — discharging almost the same amount of power now as it did in early 2019 when I bought the laptop. Were the components inside the 17-inch battery a bunch of 18650 form factor cells, then I would describe its behaviour as if, say, seven out of eight cells were dead, but one remained healthy (Coconut Battery shows about 12 per cent of the original capacity, give or take, and I can unplug it and run with battery-only, even though at 12 per cent, it amounts to having a kind of built-in UPS and not much more).
We know the battery construction inside the 17-inch PowerBooks had to be thinner than what a 18650 cell, on its side, could accommodate. As far as I’m aware, the 17-inch models have a layered cell design, much like batteries found in most complex electronics since the aughts.
And yet… the hecking thing, despite being connected to the mains constantly, has never swelled up or altogether stopped holding a charge, much as a lot of OEM and replacement batteries are wont to do with other gear — including Intel Macs with both user-replaceable and glued batteries. It’s also flatter, on both sides, than southeast Texas, Nebraska, or even an iced-over pond.
I also have a 17-inch aluminium MacBook Pro from ’08, so although it’s a different battery size, it’s basically the same thickness and form factor as what’s in the 17-inch PowerBooks. It would also be a layered Li-ion battery. I’ve had that MBP running for less than two years, and it’s already almost through with its second replacement battery (both of which, unfortunately, weren’t Apple-branded, and both having that vexatious trait of abruptly shutting off the system around 35–40 per cent of alleged charge remaining).
Although I know quality control can explain away much of the failure rate on third-party MBP batteries, it doesn’t give one much to go on when it comes to the PowerBook battery not swelling — or in having not run across many, if any user reports of swollen PowerBook 17-inch batteries.
So I feel like I’m either missing data (or even anecdata), or else there’s something fundamentally different with how Li-ion layered batteries are managed by the built-in power management board within PowerBook 17-inch batteries.
Can anyone, particularly anyone with some applied insight on chemo-electrical processes, charge management, and modern Li-ion battery tech, shed some light here?
Cheers!
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