My phone has been in use for more than two years. You probably know that the phone battery life deteriorates over time. In my case, it has come to a point where I need to charge the phone in multiple ten-minutes bursts towards the end of the day, and that’s annoying.
As you also know, you can buy just about anything on Taobao, and that includes a replacement battery for a phone. In fact, some of these products advertise up to double the capacity of the original battery (I bought one such product – 7980mAh vs 4000mAh for the original). To be taken with a pinch of salt, but any increase in capacity over the original battery is welcome.
The battery I got was only 64 Yuan (S$13.6), quite affordable right? The caveat is, you have to perform the battery replacement yourself. This can be daunting to some people, so make sure you watch the YouTube battery replacement tutorial specific to your phone model to make sure you’re comfortable with executing the battery change.
For my case, the Xiaomi K20 Pro, the process is quite straightforward. Nevertheless, i had to hold my breath when turning on the phone, post phone surgery. Thankfully it worked flawlessly. I’m happy to say that after about one day of usage, i can definitely feel the battery level dropping much slower than before, and a single charge does seem sufficient for the entire day.
The instructions leaflet included with the battery says to let the battery discharge on first time use, and thereafter to go through 5 cycles of fully charging and discharging for calibration purposes. Overall, I think it was really worthwhile to do battery replacement and to continue using my perfectly functional phone for another two years.