Samsung batteries reportedly disproportionately affected by swelling issues

Following a Youtube video from Arun “Mrwhosetheboss” Maini, Samsung is under scrutiny due to its batteries apparently swelling more commonly for the brand than any other. The Samsung phones more likely to be affected by their batteries swelling appear to be those manufactured at least around two years ago and older.

It’s a hard problem to miss, as the batteries pop the back of the phone out and would render it unusable for most people. The cause seems to be the electrolytes within the battery is decomposing, releasing gas and thus compromising its stability. While puncturing the swollen batteries don’t seem to make them explode in the worst case scenario, trying to charge them in this state would be unsafe at best.

Now, these batteries come with a label to indicate how long they’re meant to last before they become unstable. Since there is an apparent problem, we can only presume that something has gone wrong. It’s not the first time that Samsung batteries have had issues, with the highly publicized Galaxy Note 7 recall over exploding devices being one.

Samsung has yet to get back to Mrwhosetheboss at the time of the video, nor does there appear to be an official statement from the company at time of writing either. In the mean time, the video – with close to 3 millions views – has many comments from users sharing their experiences.

You have people saying they’re long term Samsung users with issues with both the batteries and “extremely poor customer service”, other tech Youtubers chiming in with similar experiences and even those working in repairs reporting more services done for Samsung phones than other brands; the last one going as far as to claim the problems are “deliberate”. There are also comments from those who say they haven’t had any issues with their Samsung thus far.

As a long term Samsung user I can only agree and have had the same issue regarding the batteries. This is however not the only concerning part of this story. I can really relate with the extremely poor customer service. Not only do they make false claims about their repair times, but they never seem to respond. I’m still waiting on my Galaxy Book 360 5G I ordered last year on black friday off their official website and don’t get any response from their customer service after way too many tries to contact them. They just don’t seem to care about the customers.

Yep can double confirm this with my collection too. Recent phones to have blown up batteries are my Galaxy Note 10+ and shockingly my Fold 2 this summer. No other phones in my collection have done this from Pixels to iPhones to Xiaomi’s etc. Weirdly enough, It happened to my Samsung phones that came after the Note 7. My Galaxy S1 till S6 Edge are completely fine stored in the same place & in exact same conditions. There is something they have done to their batteries after the Note 7 fiasco that needs to be investigated. With that being said, It only happens to the “stored Samsung phones”. No active Samsung phone in use has done this so far.

As someone who has worked for both Asurion and Assurant companies, I can say that ALOT of my insurance repairs were samsungs with swollen batteries. Also cause screens to crack as well, and for most insurance companies having your back glass broken will cause you to have to pay a deposit of about a quarter of what the phone is worth just to get a 40 dollar battery and a 10 dollar back glass fixed. I think it goes deeper than just “quality issues”, I think it’s deliberate.

As a Samsung user this is definitely very concerning. Though I never had any issues with batteries expanding, not yet anyway! and if its an old phone or any device for that matter that has a build in battery I always get the battery somewhere between 50 to 60% before retiring the device for long-term storage. When I bought my first digital camera in 2007 a sales person told me that and I been doing it ever since lol.

Under Mrwhosetheboss’ tweet for the video, you can find people assuring others that the batteries would only swell for idle phones, and avoid leaving them uncharged for extended periods. There are also many others reporting swelling on their devices, both Samsung and other brands where relevant.

We’ll see when Samsung releases a statement about the issue.

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