Exposing Phone Batteries With Fake Capacity

There is a major deceptive trend among some Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) who instead of producing genuine battery capacity are short-changing the unsuspecting customers by declaring a fake battery capacities which appears to be huge when the actual capacity is much lower.

This is mindboggling and the damning nature reveals how phones with acclaimed battery capacity of 4100mAh or more, which ordinarily should last over 24 hours appears to be as low as 1900mAh and therefore rendering mobile phones to annoying frequent power-cuts.

More than 1.5billion mobile phones were sold in 2016, the highest ever in history in a particular year. This means more people are getting connected to their loved ones. However, majority of the devices could not last for long usage because of battery issues.

This battery issue could be very annoying because you cannot tap the full benefit of your phone and sometimes you have to walk along with a spare charger or a power bank.

Battery capacities are usually measured in Milliamps Hour (mAh). It is commonly used to measure the energy capacity of a battery. In general, the more the mAh, the longer the battery capacity or battery life.

Because of the challenge of batteries not lasting long, many Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) have started producing bigger battery capacities for their phones so that users can get much more from their phones.

The most annoying is the trickish card being played by some of these OEMs hoodwinking customers to keep buying and replacing same batteries when they are actually aware that the solution to the frequent power-cut is not the phone but the battery which is fake.

Our investigative team stormed the market to find out which of the brands might be declaring fake battery capacities and short-changing the poor consumer with something less. The investigation was done using 3 brands and the results were rather shocking. Three battery samples were collected from itel Mobile, X-TIGI and Kimfly.

The solution therefore lies in identifying and differentiating between an original and fake battery and below is the battery casing which reveals the dirty deals. They all had their claimed battery capacities which are 1500mAh, 4000mAh and 2100mAh respectively.

However, knowing full well from our many researches, true battery capacities are always printed on the main battery case and not the battery paper. We ripped down the battery papers of the 3 aforementioned brands. The result was quite telling.

The results presented true battery capacities for two of the brands to be different from what was printed on their battery papers.

While itel Mobile was sincere with their claim of 1500mAh, both X-TIGI and Kimfly were not. The real battery capacity of X-TIGTI and Kimfly were 1900mAH and 1000mAH respectively instead of their acclaimed 4100mAH and 2100mAH.

Having come across over 500 victims of fake battery scam before, we recommend that brands that mislead their customers and the general public on regional markets in which they operate should be sanctioned by the appropriate authorities and Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) in Nigeria.

itel mobile and all other brands that are honest with their claims about their battery capacity must be commendable for their genuine business in giving value for money.

Below are some other tips to identify fake battery capacities from the real ones.

Tip 1: Rip down the battery paper. If no printed numbers are found on the battery, the phone is probably a fake one.

Tip 2: If you find the printed numbers after ripping down the battery paper, check the real battery capacity and compare it with the claimed and labelled capacity to identify whether the phone is genuine or fake.

Tip 3: Compare the battery weight or volume of two phones which labelled the same capacity. The one with less weight is probably a fake one.

Consumer Watch is under market surveillance and will soon come out with another episode of fake phone battery capacities of popular brands on the markets that are riding on the back of their famous brands to dupe unsuspecting consumers.

By:
Abubakari Seidu Ajarfor
[email protected]