Hello. So today I decided to play the 3DS again, but somehow it didn't feel right when I held the 3DS.
I attach a picture so maybe you can see what's wrong.
I don't think I have the required screws to open it to see what's wrong and repair it. As you can see in the picture there's something on the left side.
Hope anyone can help. It's an old 3DS that I bought back in 2011.
Taking the back off just requires a normal Philips screwdriver. If you don't have one small enough buy one of those cheap jeweller's screwdriver kits, they come in handy.
But yeah, swollen battery. Take it out right now, you can use the 3DS on the charger without a battery inserted IIRC.
The chances of it exploding or catching fire are probably small, but still, lipo fires are not something you want to have to deal with, they burn aggressively and you can't put it out with a normal fire extinguisher or water, so it's not worth the risk.
Edit: In the future, to avoid this happening, always charge your devices up to at least 50% before putting them away if you are not planning to use them again for a while, and every 6 months check on the battery to make sure it still has plenty of charge and charge it up to 50% again if it's not. 50% is when the battery is in equilibrium so the least amount of wear is put on it. The worst thing you can do with lipo batteries is discharge them and then leave them for a long time to self discharge even further. A battery that's left to self discharge below the minimum safe voltage rating (typically 2.5V) is considered faulty and should be discarded, but usually you can still rescue them, sometimes they swell like this though. It doesn't usually happen with a battery that's been kept in good condition by making sure it never gets fully discharged.
Most important thing is to remove the old battery fast, before it leaks all over the inside and destroy the 3DS!
Lipo batteries don't really leak. There's hardly any liquid inside, and if the battery bursts, you have bigger issues than leaking tbh because it will probably catch on fire and lipo batteries burn aggressively.
