Nexus 4 battery bloating

&quot;They told us the devices were out of warranty and that replacement (through repair and refurbishing) would cost $153 USD.&quot;<p>This is a common trick attempted by the retail business - to focus on the warranty (where they dictate the terms) rather than your contract (where they often cannot). If you bought the device, you still have a contract of sale with the seller. The details depend on your jurisdiction.<p>Perhaps in the US the manufacturer can dictate the terms of your contract of sale, I don&#x27;t know. But here in the UK they cannot - it is statutory.<p>When I attempted to have a broken Nexus 7 repaired or replaced here in the UK, the store focused on it being &quot;out of warranty&quot;. I insisted that I was not claiming under their warranty, but under the contract of sale (the Sale of Goods Act in the UK) where depending on the nature of the goods and the advertised price the store can be liable for up to six years for manufacturing defects. Eventually, after insisting for a while, they made us good with a partial refund to cover the loss of use of the device subsequent to the failure, though it took us a while to negotiate a cash settlement rather than a store credit.<p>tl;dr: &quot;out of warranty&quot; is not necessarily the end of the story, although I don&#x27;t know about the US.

This is more common than you might think, particularly on older iPhones. I co-own a repair store in Austin, TX and we get several of these every month--usually on older iPhones that have been dropped &quot;just right&quot;. (Not saying yours was the fault of a drop, but if you leave it plugged in 99% of the time, that was probably your issue.)<p>Anyway, it&#x27;s stupid easy to replace these batteries--they&#x27;re just glued in, usually, so you just buy a replacement battery and back cover, use a tool to pry up the battery, place a new battery in along with some adhesive to hold it down, and pop the new back cover on. One pro tip: Buy at least one more new battery than you need, as some percentage of them, no matter where you buy them from, are defective.<p>We do these in-store for iPhone 4&#x2F;5 in under 10 minutes--I don&#x27;t doubt you can do something similar on the N4.

I just replaced the battery in my Nexus 5 due to earlier stages of the same issue. The battery failure was causing a lot of random device shutdowns that I had initially thought were related to the rollout of Lollipop.<p>There&#x27;s a long support thread of people with similar issues at: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;productforums.google.com&#x2F;forum&#x2F;#!topic&#x2F;nexus&#x2F;IJSOuc7gw0w" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;productforums.google.com&#x2F;forum&#x2F;#!topic&#x2F;nexus&#x2F;IJSOuc7...</a><p>Several of the posters there noticed that their battery had started bulging, ordered a new one, and reported that their devices were back to normal. Same issue and fix for my device.<p>This issue is definitely concerning, and I&#x27;m a bit surprised that more hasn&#x27;t been made of it by now. It seems to be a fairly widespread problem.

They ought to cover that unsightly box with some oily rags.

I&#x27;m a Nexus 4 owner and for the last few months, opening Snapchat has made a really weird analogue clicking noise. The clicking noise has progressed over that time and now my phone will constantly make the same loud clicking noise whenever I touch the screen. It sounds very similar to &quot;sparking&quot; two wires.<p>I can reboot my phone to make it go away (for about day, but after that the clicking comes back). I&#x27;ve never dropped or scratched my phone.

Although I really like my Nexus 4 as a piece of hardware (generally, it just works) I have run into this problem before. Some googling around the issue indicates that it&#x27;s fairly common, and may be related to the way the device does a poor job of offloading heat. (Due to the arrangement of the internals, a lot of the heat conducts back through the battery connector instead of into the case of the phone, shortening the lifetime of the battery, or so I read somewhere.)<p>The heat sink issue can apparently be relieved[1], although I haven&#x27;t tried this on my own device yet. I did replace the battery, though, after the first one failed and started swelling (not as badly as the pictures, but bad enough to deform the back case noticeably).<p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.makeuseof.com&#x2F;tag&#x2F;got-a-hot-nexus-4-heres-a-hack-that-will-cool-it-down&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.makeuseof.com&#x2F;tag&#x2F;got-a-hot-nexus-4-heres-a-hack-...</a>

The devices of concern are stored in a cardboard box on a wooden bench? Noting the risk of combustion is low, hopefully that bench is not near any combustible materials in that wall.

Interestingly enough, my beloved Nexus 4 just died this past month. I noticed it getting extremely hot, and then one day started a boot loop that I could not fix. I figured some hardware broke. My uncle also picked up one around the same time, and is going through similar problems - overheating and rebooting, though has no boot loop issues. I will warn him of this battery issue.<p>On another note, I just purchased a Zenfone 2. I accidentally dropped it from about a foot (getting out of the car) and cracked the screen. I noticed most other Zenfone 2 phone that has a cracked screen appears to have it crack in a very similar spot (top right). I guess all phones have their weaknesses. Though, my nexus 4 looked like it went to war and back having been dropped (at excessive heights), and never broke.

The video of the battery catching fire is a little distressing knowing that I carry one of those in my pocket at all times.

Am I the only one who got confused and though for a second that testmunk.com was the engineering blog of hipmunk.com?<p>Very similar logo&#x2F;mascot.

I can confirm that this happens regularly. For the team I work with it has been all Samsung S4&#x2F;S5&#x27;s that have had this happen. And almost all happened within the first year. Our Nexus 5&#x27;s though area all good and happy.

Why wouldn&#x27;t you just replace the battery and back cover? A new battery can be had for as little as $6 and a cover is cheap. I&#x27;ve replaced two puffy batteries in my Nexus 4 without any problems and the phone runs fine. It&#x27;s not having a great time keeping up with the current generations of cell networks but it&#x27;s still a pretty stellar device.<p>Some day soon I&#x27;m going to really have to try and hunt down a ~4&quot; handset to replace this one... :(

Nexus 4 received bad press in the past years after customer disappointment: overheating, camera issue (making the phone crash - warning about this bug in Snapchat), horrible battery life... This article is just another example.<p>Very disappointed to hear that it happened with a Google backed device - I hope Nexus 5 and Nexus 6 are more stable better. Not sure if I&#x27;ll buy another Nexus phone in the future after reading all that.

Had the battery on my S4 replaced because of exactly this issue, battery performance was also dramatically affected too.<p>Aparently this is&#x2F;was a common issue with a certain batch of Samsung batteries causing them to replace batteries with this problem for free outside of warranty (in the UK at least).

I had 8 batteries bloat on my Galaxy S II, I assume it was mostly to the CPU running at 100% heating up the battery while draining it really fast.<p>Ever since using Cyanogenmod instead of the official ROMs and being more aware of the over heating issue, my battery &quot;consumption&quot; dropped.

After I updated my Nexus4 to 5.1.1 the entire device randomly heats up so hot you can&#x27;t even hold it. Not worth debugging since I don&#x27;t want it to explode in my face so I junked it.

It&#x27;s made by LG. Throughout their long history, they&#x27;ve never really had a reputation for quality. Keep that in mind the next time you shop for any electronics or appliances.

Sounds like you have a bad battery. This can happen with any device with a li battery. You shouldn&#x27;t need to quarantine all of the devices.

Site appears to be borked for now, archive linky:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;vmEQW" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;vmEQW</a>

I have a Galaxy Nexus with the battery at least 4 times the size it should be. Its in my garage, I will take a photo of it when I get home.

Thanks for correcting the title HN. Lithium batteries bloat, explode, etc... No manufacturing process is perfect, so there is always going to be a small percentage that do this. The only hard requirement is that the failure be contained.<p>In other words, there&#x27;s nothing particularly newsworthy here. The fact that testmunk found this significant and specifically paint it as a problem with the nexus 4 does more to show their lack of experience in the field than anything else.

I stopped placing so much brand premium on &quot;Made By Google&quot;, at the end of the day, you are at the mercy of the manufacturer.<p>My google nexus phone was clunky, slow, randomly freeze and restart during phone conversation. When you dropped it the battery and back lid would fall out or not fit properly. I nearly gave up on Android.<p>Then my asus nexus 7 screen shattered when I dropped it with replacement cost that made it unfeasible to replace it (warranty did not cover it).<p>Now I have a Moto G, and considering that I paid only 200 bucks for it, it runs extremely light, smooth and reliable, durable, no battery or back lid falling out. Lot of bang for your buck, faith restored in Android.

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