In another thread I’ve been talking about extending the internal battery life of my customized V1 Switch.
I’m pretty sure the things I’m about to explore are going to be applicable to V2 as well but do your own research to confirm and don’t just blindly follow me off a cliff!
Messing with batteries can be dangerous. You can hurt your Switch and you can hurt yourself if you do something wrong. Don’t take unnecessary risks.
Disclaimers out of the way let’s bring everyone up to speed with some background…
Late last year I was struggling to put my V1’s clothes back on. Too many changes all at the same time got me all fuct up ya’ll.
As I was buttoning up the project here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/aluminum-switch-wip.614047/page-2#post-9967361
…I left a teaser about batteries.
Inspired by this post
by /u/boiniqqua447/ on Redit @randy_w and I were brainstorming similar battery mods and lamenting the state of Chinese batteries en masse. See the thread for more details…
There are some creative people out there, that’s for sure.
Anyway, here’s where we are. I have in my possession 5 sets of batteries, a spare mid frame and a willing Dremel tool. I’m going to document my findings here and post updates as I go along.
The ideas that were tossed around got me to wondering how much space I had to work with.
Here are my real world measurements of the mid-frame:
For those keeping score that gives us 71.89mm x 76.97mm x 6.98mm to work with.
Based on bad eyesight and shaky hands I’m going to say it’s about 72 x 77 x 7.
One of the neat tricks @randy_w found was a place that was cutting through the midframe all the way to the back of the screen to give a little more depth.
Like so:
let’s see if it’s…
I’ll take another 1.11mm in height!
…or maybe I just wanted a reason to break out the Dremel!
At any rate that takes our depth to 6.98+1.11=8.19mm
71.89mm x 76.97mm x 8.19mm
With the midframe measured let’s start with a high level overview of the battery of battery contenders…
Here are the physical and electrical specs of each of the contenders:
I’m pretty sure the things I’m about to explore are going to be applicable to V2 as well but do your own research to confirm and don’t just blindly follow me off a cliff!
Messing with batteries can be dangerous. You can hurt your Switch and you can hurt yourself if you do something wrong. Don’t take unnecessary risks.
Disclaimers out of the way let’s bring everyone up to speed with some background…
Late last year I was struggling to put my V1’s clothes back on. Too many changes all at the same time got me all fuct up ya’ll.
As I was buttoning up the project here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/aluminum-switch-wip.614047/page-2#post-9967361
…I left a teaser about batteries.
Inspired by this post
by /u/boiniqqua447/ on Redit @randy_w and I were brainstorming similar battery mods and lamenting the state of Chinese batteries en masse. See the thread for more details…
There are some creative people out there, that’s for sure.
Anyway, here’s where we are. I have in my possession 5 sets of batteries, a spare mid frame and a willing Dremel tool. I’m going to document my findings here and post updates as I go along.
A little bit about battery sizes while we’re here.
You will see them quoted as 3 x double digit numbers. In the Reddit post they talk about using 804080 batteries and you can see that stamped on the sides of most LiPo batteries in a dot matrix kind of text.
Here‘s how to interpret what’s written on the side:
Firstly there might be letters in the front. LP stands for Lithium (or Lithium-ion) Polymer. There are other constructions as well but these are the ones we’re interested in.
The first 80 means 8.0mm. It’s kind of silly IMO because it’s not micrometers or anything “metric”y. They just arbitrarily slapped a decimal place and called it a day. If you go above 10mm they just stop using that level of accuracy for thickness. If you go below a 1/2 mm they stick a 0 in the front.
The middle number is how wide the battery is. No room for decimal places here. It’s simply the number of mm.
The last number is the length of the battery INCLUDING the protection circuit on the top.
example:
Here‘s a cute little LP502035
It’s about 5mm thick and you can see the width of 20mm and finally the length of 35mm so 502035.
So you could look this up yourself and I encourage you to do so but why am I harping on this so much.
LIES!
A high quality manufacturer will typically adhere to a level of tolerance.
Thickness ± 0.3mm
Width ± 0.5mm
Length ± 1mm
as we get into more batteries you’ll see that Chinese manufacturers have little tolerance for…tolerance.
this extends to the mAHs as well. You really can’t trust the labels on these things, much less the marketing advertisements on sites like AliExpress and TaoBao. More on that later…
You will see them quoted as 3 x double digit numbers. In the Reddit post they talk about using 804080 batteries and you can see that stamped on the sides of most LiPo batteries in a dot matrix kind of text.
Here‘s how to interpret what’s written on the side:
Firstly there might be letters in the front. LP stands for Lithium (or Lithium-ion) Polymer. There are other constructions as well but these are the ones we’re interested in.
The first 80 means 8.0mm. It’s kind of silly IMO because it’s not micrometers or anything “metric”y. They just arbitrarily slapped a decimal place and called it a day. If you go above 10mm they just stop using that level of accuracy for thickness. If you go below a 1/2 mm they stick a 0 in the front.
The middle number is how wide the battery is. No room for decimal places here. It’s simply the number of mm.
The last number is the length of the battery INCLUDING the protection circuit on the top.
example:
Here‘s a cute little LP502035
It’s about 5mm thick and you can see the width of 20mm and finally the length of 35mm so 502035.
So you could look this up yourself and I encourage you to do so but why am I harping on this so much.
LIES!
A high quality manufacturer will typically adhere to a level of tolerance.
Thickness ± 0.3mm
Width ± 0.5mm
Length ± 1mm
as we get into more batteries you’ll see that Chinese manufacturers have little tolerance for…tolerance.
this extends to the mAHs as well. You really can’t trust the labels on these things, much less the marketing advertisements on sites like AliExpress and TaoBao. More on that later…
The ideas that were tossed around got me to wondering how much space I had to work with.
Here are my real world measurements of the mid-frame:
For those keeping score that gives us 71.89mm x 76.97mm x 6.98mm to work with.
Based on bad eyesight and shaky hands I’m going to say it’s about 72 x 77 x 7.
One of the neat tricks @randy_w found was a place that was cutting through the midframe all the way to the back of the screen to give a little more depth.
Like so:
let’s see if it’s…
I’ll take another 1.11mm in height!
…or maybe I just wanted a reason to break out the Dremel!
At any rate that takes our depth to 6.98+1.11=8.19mm
71.89mm x 76.97mm x 8.19mm
With the midframe measured let’s start with a high level overview of the battery of battery contenders…
Here are the physical and electrical specs of each of the contenders:
Physical:
71.40mm x 75.19mm x 5.87mm
vs midframe measurements
71.89mm x 76.97mm x 8.19mm
Whew! It fits! Just barely!
Electrical:
3.7V
4310mAH
16.0Wh
71.40mm x 75.19mm x 5.87mm
vs midframe measurements
71.89mm x 76.97mm x 8.19mm
Whew! It fits! Just barely!
Electrical:
3.7V
4310mAH
16.0Wh
This was the size of the battery in the Reddit post. Serious, no BS.
View attachment 1673935281318.jpeg
physical:
804040
As discussed in the specs spoiler above this battery should be 8mm thick by 40mm wide and 80mm long.
They were ordered as a pair from the same vendor.
Let’s see how we did…
obviously I removed the protection circuit on the top battery…for science.
The one on the right is 38.10mm while the one on the left is 37.82mm
Remember the tolerance specs for width? Width ± 0.5mm.
37.82+.5=38.32
They are just barely within tolerance of each other by .2mm
HOWEVER these are supposed to be 40mm across.
38.10+.5mm=38.6mm or about 1.4mm smaller than acceptable tolerance for the largest one.
it gets better (you can probably already see it in the photos)
Tolerance for length should be:
Length ± 1mm
our guy is 82.5mm or 2.5mm larger than spec or 1.5mm over spec..
Hold on…don’t go anywhere. We’re not done yet!
As you can see I optimistically started stripping the first battery of its protection circuitry because I just knew it was going to fit. I mean c’mon man. I saw it on Reddit! at any rate this means I have to measure comparatively to get the length of the other battery.
(Sorry…I was young and excited. I’ve grown since then.)
77.61mm without the circuit…
73.14mm without the circuit on the other one!
4.47mm difference the other way!
I reckon this guy is about 2mm under spec after subtracting the 1mm over spec for the other battery in the pair.
what the hell, AliExpress vendor!?!?!!
I’m starting to get the impression that we have different definitions of the words “quality control”!
Surely we’re within tolerance for an 8.0mm accurate thickness:
Thickness ± 0.3mm
6.61mm is NOT w/i .3mm of 8.0mm.
Unfortunately the 6.91 of the other battery is still woefully under the spec that the .3mm tolerance would lead you to expect.
Wait a tick, what’s with the other end?
10.38mm?
I’m kidding, this wasn’t the vendor’s fault!
I was attempting to measure the mAh of this battery and what do you know…it got all spicy pillow on me!
More on this failed test and why knowing the mAh of a pair of batteries is important in the next installment.
Interesting takeaway on these is 804080 was the recommended size in the Reddit thread but using the smallest of the odd assembly of measurements we get:
73.14mm x 75.64 (37.82*2) x 6.61mm
vs midframe measurement
71.89mm x 76.97mm x 8.19mm
Electrical:
3.7v
3000mAh (6000mAh for 2)
The capacity increase is in the desired ballpark BUT unless you’re counting on getting two random batteries of similar oddball size, there‘s really no way these are going to fit side by side. There’s a full 2.25mm of overhang on the length. I did consider turning them in degrees but then the other side starts out way over. These will have to be eliminated from the pool.
Time to think outside the box…
View attachment 1673935281318.jpeg
physical:
804040
As discussed in the specs spoiler above this battery should be 8mm thick by 40mm wide and 80mm long.
They were ordered as a pair from the same vendor.
Let’s see how we did…
obviously I removed the protection circuit on the top battery…for science.
The one on the right is 38.10mm while the one on the left is 37.82mm
Remember the tolerance specs for width? Width ± 0.5mm.
37.82+.5=38.32
They are just barely within tolerance of each other by .2mm
HOWEVER these are supposed to be 40mm across.
38.10+.5mm=38.6mm or about 1.4mm smaller than acceptable tolerance for the largest one.
it gets better (you can probably already see it in the photos)
Tolerance for length should be:
Length ± 1mm
our guy is 82.5mm or 2.5mm larger than spec or 1.5mm over spec..
Hold on…don’t go anywhere. We’re not done yet!
As you can see I optimistically started stripping the first battery of its protection circuitry because I just knew it was going to fit. I mean c’mon man. I saw it on Reddit! at any rate this means I have to measure comparatively to get the length of the other battery.
(Sorry…I was young and excited. I’ve grown since then.)
77.61mm without the circuit…
73.14mm without the circuit on the other one!
4.47mm difference the other way!
I reckon this guy is about 2mm under spec after subtracting the 1mm over spec for the other battery in the pair.
what the hell, AliExpress vendor!?!?!!
I’m starting to get the impression that we have different definitions of the words “quality control”!
Surely we’re within tolerance for an 8.0mm accurate thickness:
Thickness ± 0.3mm
6.61mm is NOT w/i .3mm of 8.0mm.
Unfortunately the 6.91 of the other battery is still woefully under the spec that the .3mm tolerance would lead you to expect.
Wait a tick, what’s with the other end?
10.38mm?
I’m kidding, this wasn’t the vendor’s fault!
I was attempting to measure the mAh of this battery and what do you know…it got all spicy pillow on me!
More on this failed test and why knowing the mAh of a pair of batteries is important in the next installment.
Interesting takeaway on these is 804080 was the recommended size in the Reddit thread but using the smallest of the odd assembly of measurements we get:
73.14mm x 75.64 (37.82*2) x 6.61mm
vs midframe measurement
71.89mm x 76.97mm x 8.19mm
Electrical:
3.7v
3000mAh (6000mAh for 2)
The capacity increase is in the desired ballpark BUT unless you’re counting on getting two random batteries of similar oddball size, there‘s really no way these are going to fit side by side. There’s a full 2.25mm of overhang on the length. I did consider turning them in degrees but then the other side starts out way over. These will have to be eliminated from the pool.
Time to think outside the box…
After scouring what must have been several thousand options I got to thinking, if we can’t do side-by-side, how about stacking them? After all, this is how RC cars do their multi-cell batteries.
I found these guys with a size of 406680 so that would be 4mm thick by 66mm wide and 80mm long (including the protection circuit which we will be removing.)
Right off the bat we’re 1.8mm short of the promised 66mm.
Remember the width tolerance of Width ± 0.5mm?
Don‘t worry if you forgot, it seems battery manufactures don’t remember either so it’s no big deal!
I was taking a chance on the 66mm to begin with but these guys were sure to be flopping around in the battery bay without some additional padding.
length is 72.42 without the PC card.
thickness came in at a disappointing 3.14mm for both batteries as it’s well short of the 4mm ( ± 0.3mm)
6.48mm when stacked. Should have been closer to 8mm ( ± 0.6mm)
Starting to see a pattern?
64.2mm x 72.42mm x 6.48mm
vs midframe measurement
71.89mm x 76.97mm x 8.19mm
With anemic measurements all around this battery is going to be like throwing a hot dog down a hallway (giggidy!)
…but it gets better!
Electrical:
3.7V
3600mAh
wait, what?!?!
The smallest volume of battery this far has about 20% more power? I don’t believe you.
verdict? Too flappy on all sides and with an unbelievable power spec, these will never do. :-(
I found these guys with a size of 406680 so that would be 4mm thick by 66mm wide and 80mm long (including the protection circuit which we will be removing.)
Right off the bat we’re 1.8mm short of the promised 66mm.
Remember the width tolerance of Width ± 0.5mm?
Don‘t worry if you forgot, it seems battery manufactures don’t remember either so it’s no big deal!
I was taking a chance on the 66mm to begin with but these guys were sure to be flopping around in the battery bay without some additional padding.
length is 72.42 without the PC card.
thickness came in at a disappointing 3.14mm for both batteries as it’s well short of the 4mm ( ± 0.3mm)
6.48mm when stacked. Should have been closer to 8mm ( ± 0.6mm)
Starting to see a pattern?
64.2mm x 72.42mm x 6.48mm
vs midframe measurement
71.89mm x 76.97mm x 8.19mm
With anemic measurements all around this battery is going to be like throwing a hot dog down a hallway (giggidy!)
…but it gets better!
Electrical:
3.7V
3600mAh
wait, what?!?!
The smallest volume of battery this far has about 20% more power? I don’t believe you.
verdict? Too flappy on all sides and with an unbelievable power spec, these will never do. :-(
These guys have enough pride in their work to not only put their brand name on the side, they also come with a holographic sticker (I assume to prevent return fraud.)
It’s a nice touch so I have high hopes.
They’re labeled as 407080, let’s see if they measure up in reality.
65.58 is a far cry from the expected 70mm. 4.42mm short. Tolerance is supposed to be Width ± 0.5mm. Nnnnope.
At 81.29mm long that’s only 1.29mm off the expected length. I’m starting to realize I need to be more tolerant of these tolerances. Length ± 1mm so only .29mm off.
Without the PC card they are right at 77.05mm
For thickness these guys are coming in at 3.71mm for an undershoot of .29mm. That’s within the tolerance Thickness ± 0.3mm! Super excited.
65.58 mm x 77.05mm x 7.42mm (3.71x2)
vs midframe measurement
71.89mm x 76.97mm x 8.19mm
Maybe if we cut her toes off the glass slipper will fit?
Electrical:
3.7V
3000mAh
This is a bit more of a realistic capacity estimate but the fact that it won’t fit lengthwise (but only just) will eliminate this battery from the running. It[s really too bad because the tolerances were almost there and I think the quality is going to be better. I mean…it has a sticker and a hologram with their name on it so it’s gotta be good.
It’s a nice touch so I have high hopes.
They’re labeled as 407080, let’s see if they measure up in reality.
65.58 is a far cry from the expected 70mm. 4.42mm short. Tolerance is supposed to be Width ± 0.5mm. Nnnnope.
At 81.29mm long that’s only 1.29mm off the expected length. I’m starting to realize I need to be more tolerant of these tolerances. Length ± 1mm so only .29mm off.
Without the PC card they are right at 77.05mm
For thickness these guys are coming in at 3.71mm for an undershoot of .29mm. That’s within the tolerance Thickness ± 0.3mm! Super excited.
65.58 mm x 77.05mm x 7.42mm (3.71x2)
vs midframe measurement
71.89mm x 76.97mm x 8.19mm
Maybe if we cut her toes off the glass slipper will fit?
Electrical:
3.7V
3000mAh
This is a bit more of a realistic capacity estimate but the fact that it won’t fit lengthwise (but only just) will eliminate this battery from the running. It[s really too bad because the tolerances were almost there and I think the quality is going to be better. I mean…it has a sticker and a hologram with their name on it so it’s gotta be good.
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