Hacking Battery Problem After

[NightsEkim]

Mine forces shutdown at around 43% charge. So I loose almost half of battery and loose any game progress if not aware. Don't even think about flashing nand in this state.

I will receive my ifixit kit today and will report back if unpluging the battery + discharge capacitor by pressing power at least 20sec fix the issue

Gotcha, gonna test mine now, mines been on the dock for a few days since I've been in Linux so its at "100%" gonna see if it dies at 30%.

 

[DarkMatterCore]

I experienced the same battery discharge problem and fixed it using the steps mentioned by @Shadow LAG. Thanks. They should *really* be added to the first post.

For the record, I used a SATA power cable to short pins 1 & 10. I used the Arch Linux image provided by @kombos in their NAND dump tutorial, along with an SanDisk 8 GB micro SD card. I decided to send the gzip'd NAND dump via SSH to my Ubuntu host, and my Switch died on me at 23% (I totally forgot to connect it to the AC charger due to my over-excitement). That's when the console began to display the same symptoms as the rest: unable to boot unless the battery has been charged for a while and sudden shutdowns whenever the battery percentage reached 40% - 50%.

Nonetheless, I was still able to boot Arch Linux once again and send the gzip'd NAND dump without problems.

I'd be more than willing to help find a software fix. I don't really mind opening the console a few more times if that helps (there's no such thing as warranty here in Venezuela).

 

[NightsEkim]

Yeah mine died at about 42% :\. Looks like I'm popping this sucker open to reseat the battery.

Alright so I completed the process of taking the switch apart and then reseating the battery after waiting 30 seconds (Holding power the whole time). I wanted to bring some suggestions/traps I fell in to here:

1. SDCard reader: DO NOT have an SDCard in the reader when you are reseating it, to put the console back together, if you accidentally hit the wrong pins you will brick your SDCard (not the console). My pro tip here is to remove the foam on the back of the plug for the SDCard reader to re seat it. Then re apply said foam.
2. Small Screws: The top 2 and bottom 2 screws (I don't think I needed to remove them so shame on me) are really small and really easy to lose, I dropped one, so screw count minus one (I'll be buying spare screws from ebay tomorrow because why not).
3. Be careful: Make sure your console is off etc before doing this, check frequently that the screen is still off as you disassemble as you may accidentally hit the power button which may (even though your batter is "dead") power on the console.

Stay safe kiddos and RIP SDCard and screw.

Oh:
4. Joycon rails: You only have to remove the center screw in the rail (Each Side) to pop the back cover. Don't remove them all (Less screws you might lose).

 

[guily6669]

5. You forgot the main most important thing, did it fix the problem 4 you?

 

[ut0pia]

Yeah mine died at about 42% :\. Looks like I'm popping this sucker open to reseat the battery.

Alright so I completed the process of taking the switch apart and then reseating the battery after waiting 30 seconds (Holding power the whole time). I wanted to bring some suggestions/traps I fell in to here:

1. SDCard reader: DO NOT have an SDCard in the reader when you are reseating it, to put the console back together, if you accidentally hit the wrong pins you will brick your SDCard (not the console). My pro tip here is to remove the foam on the back of the plug for the SDCard reader to re seat it. Then re apply said foam.
2. Small Screws: The top 2 and bottom 2 screws (I don't think I needed to remove them so shame on me) are really small and really easy to lose, I dropped one, so screw count minus one (I'll be buying spare screws from ebay tomorrow because why not).
3. Be careful: Make sure your console is off etc before doing this, check frequently that the screen is still off as you disassemble as you may accidentally hit the power button which may (even though your batter is "dead") power on the console.

Stay safe kiddos and RIP SDCard and screw.

Oh:
4. Joycon rails: You only have to remove the center screw in the rail (Each Side) to pop the back cover. Don't remove them all (Less screws you might lose).

Thanks a lot for all your tips.

I can confirm now, clearing capacitors by removing the battery and pressing power button fixed my battery problem. I was able to play from almost full charge to 0% without my switch powering off.

None of the previous soft solution worked.

Side effect : it also restore the super nag update reminder...

 

[TerraPhantm]

Just reseated my battery connector. Deliberately did not press the power button until after it was put back together for science. It was unplugged for about the duration of time it takes to clean up the old thermal paste and apply new stuff (maybe a minute or so?) Jury's still out, but so far BOTW is still running at 25%, when the lowest I was able to get before was ~40%.

Also for reference, the triwing and philips screws appear to be 2.0mm. Also, the one screw on top and the two by the USB-C connector don't appear to be magnetic (or are much less strongly magnetic compared to the other screws), so be careful not to lose those.

 

[guily6669]

Just out of curiosity which thermal compound have you used? And did you noticed the fans spinning slower?

 

[TerraPhantm]

Switch finally got down to 0% and gave the low battery warning before doing a proper shutdown. I think I can call this fixed.

So as mentioned above, I deliberately didn't press the power button until it was put back together. So I think it's safe to say that pressing the power button isn't necessary. Won't hurt anything, but if you forget to press it, it's not like you have to open the thing up and do it all over. Generally it's good practice with anything electronic to disconnect power for at least 30 seconds, so that's what I'd recommend.

Just out of curiosity which thermal compound have you used? And did you noticed the fans spinning slower?

I only changed the thermal compound between the rf shield and the heatpipe. I didn't want to remove the heatsink itself. I used Noctua NT-H1 (no particular reason for that over the other high-end compounds -- just what I had laying around). I didn't notice much of a fan difference, but I wasn't looking for said difference either.

 

[guily6669]

Oh forget it then, I thought you would have changed the SOC thermal compound too, but I wonder why didn't you just do it since you already had almost all the work done... the backplate won't do that much difference as the one on the SOC.

And about the battery yeah I already knew it would reset in just seconds without pressing power button since I saw in a video on youtube and its almost instantly actually, that's why I said I never seen that pressing power is a requirement even though I also do it on my PC to shave a few seconds of waiting as their capacitors take a few more time to discharge. Even pressing power button on mine takes a a few seconds as it has some kind of UPS like feature on my motherboard (but off course its not really an ups or anything like it...).

 

[TerraPhantm]

Oh forget it then, I thought you would have changed the SOC thermal compound too, but I wonder why didn't you just do it since you already had almost all the work done... the backplate won't do that much difference as the one on the SOC.

And about the battery yeah I already knew it would reset in just seconds without pressing power button since I saw in a video on youtube and its almost instantly actually, that's why I said I never seen that pressing power is a requirement even though I also do it on my PC to shave a few seconds of waiting as their capacitors take a few more time to discharge. Even pressing power button on mine takes a a few seconds as it has some kind of UPS like feature on my motherboard (but off course its not really an ups or anything like it...).

The other thermal compound over the SOC looked to be a silver-bearing compound already, so I expected any improvement to be minimal. Only replaced the rf shield compound because I had to. It's not like I'm overclocking this thing - I trust the factory heatsink and compound to adequately cool it.

And there were others in this thread insisting that the power press is necessary to discharge the capacitors.

 

[Bartesco]

Still isn't a software fix?

 

[TerraPhantm]

Still isn't a software fix?

I haven't seen anything.

 

[alkar]

Still isn't a software fix?

nope

 

[Shadow LAG]

Still isn't a software fix?

Can't replicate the issue so can't provide a soft fix for a problem I can't test.

 

[TerraPhantm]

Can't replicate the issue so can't provide a soft fix for a problem I can't test.

What have you tried when trying to replicate?

 

[Shadow LAG]

What have you tried when trying to replicate?

Letting switch die on Linux overnight, charge to full outside of RCM, and keep screen on / sleep off in Horizon OS. Goes down to zero no issues.

 

[TerraPhantm]

Letting switch die on Linux overnight, charge to full outside of RCM, and keep screen on / sleep off in Horizon OS. Goes down to zero no issues.

I used the linux image from this thread: [Tutorial] How to dump Switch NAND using Linux | GBAtemp.net - The Independent Video Game Community and I suspect a lot of others did too. Maybe something is up there if you haven't tried that one?

Also have you tried any loads? My Switch would cut power much earlier while playing something like BOTW rather than letting it idle in the home menu.

 

[crow132]

I used the linux image from this thread: [Tutorial] How to dump Switch NAND using Linux | GBAtemp.net - The Independent Video Game Community and I suspect a lot of others did too. Maybe something is up there if you haven't tried that one?

Also have you tried any loads? My Switch would cut power much earlier while playing something like BOTW rather than letting it idle in the home menu.

i literally tried that linux image yesterday for 5 minutes and now this problem is happening to me too, i did not even disconnect the usb while using it, but still...
dont use that build, it is fucked up.

 

[subcon959]

Is anyone measuring the actual battery life or just assuming there's a problem because it shuts off at some seemingly high percentage?

 

[TerraPhantm]

Is anyone measuring the actual battery life or just assuming there's a problem because it shuts off at some seemingly high percentage?

It was shutting off early. And it would also do so without warning instead of detecting the battery is critically low and saving the current state.