An Update on the Farphone's Battery

An old Fairphone-turned-web server just got a spicy safety makeover: the builder yanked the battery and taped the charging cable after folks on lobste.rs and Hacker News warned about lithium batteries living on the charger forever. Cue the comment war. The skeptics fired first: “For how long?” asked conradev, basically predicting this cable-powered miracle is on borrowed time. Telaneo waved the caution flag, saying some older devices assume a fresh battery and can behave badly when it’s worn out. Then came the horror stories: lisper dropped a chilling tale of MacBook batteries swelling enough to warp the case—twice. Meanwhile, the chill crew rolled in: joecool1029 claimed years of running phones plugged in 24/7 as Wi‑Fi hotspots (an “AP,” a tiny router) with no drama, joking that compiling Gentoo—nerd-speak for heavy software building—roasts laptop batteries more than any charger ever could. One commenter even asked if different battery chemistry was used, which had everyone side-eyeing the idea of a homebrew battery swap. French blogger Korben amplified the story, but the real show is the thread: fear vs. flex, doom vs. duct tape, with the DIY’er thanking the crowd for preventing a “server explosion.”