EZ Battery Reconditioning Guide Exposed

Someone was nice enough to tell us what they learned from a part of the EZ Battery Reconditioning guide. Sure, the EZ Battery people got their money, but at least we can give the person that asked an honest opinion on what they bought.

One of the supplementary guides is titled "How To Revive A Dead Phone Battery", and I made sure to ask if the word Dead was in quotes. There is supposedly more information on how to recondition li-ion batteries beyond the supplement. But we'll start with the supplement.

The word Dead is not in quotes. They supposedly put it in quotes later in the document.

Wow... If I had the chutzpah to pull off publishing something like this for money I'd probably be richer in my bank account. Fortunately, I value my soul more than my bank account.

The method they propose is to "jump start" a good battery that has gone below what we call the "threshold voltage".

I'll explain what a threshold voltage is. Every cell phone has a charger in it that takes a 5V USB signal and modifies it to properly charge the li-ion battery. If the voltage of the battery goes below a certain level (the threshold voltage) the electronics in the phone will not recognize the battery and thus won't charge it. The solution COULD be to raise the voltage of the cell just a little so it reaches the threshold voltage and the phone can recognize the battery and charge it. This, again, only works if the battery is actually a good battery that happens to have a low voltage.

Please note, every smart charger has a threshold voltage regardless of chemistry the charger works with. The solution in cases like this, whether it be Lead Acid, NiCd, NiMH, or even Li-Ion is to charge the battery with what we call a "dumb" charger. A dumb charger is just a power supply that delivers a certain voltage whenever electrically possible and thus a threshold voltage is not applicable.

That power supply could be any DC power source in a certain voltage range above the threshold voltage. Even another battery of the same type that has enough charge in it to give a low battery a higher voltage would work.

So the guide says that to revive a DEAD PHONE BATTERY one should apply a straight 5VDC from a USB supply by cutting a USB cable, expose the bare leads, and touch them to the + and - of the battery in the right order.

Doing that CAN raise the voltage of a single cell li-ion battery enough for the charger to start working. Don't hold it on the battery too long, though, because the battery will be taking in the full Amperage that the USB supply will deliver. And it will take that Amperage for as long as the wires are touching the contacts - even after the battery is fully charged. And overcharging a li-ion battery is a bad idea. As far as I understand, the supplemental guide does not give a time limit, but I wouldn't want to hold those wires on there for more than a few seconds. If this trick is going to work, that's all the time it should need.

But is that the kind of dead phone battery that 99.999% of us run into? The kind of battery that is good but just happens to be below the threshold voltage of the phone? No. The dead phone batteries we encounter are ones that have been in use for a year or three and need to be charged at lunch just to make it through the day.

This EZ Battery Reconditioning trick won't work for a battery like that.

I realize the title of the guide and the supplement and all their advertising might lead you to believe that a normal dead battery that you get after using your phone for 3 years can be reconditioned. And perhaps there are other parts of the guide that go into that. But nothing about it has been told to me yet.

Perhaps people can ask me more questions about the methods in the guides and I'll keep giving my opinion on their effectiveness.

Do you have a EZ Battery Reconditioning guide? Have a question about it? Feel free to ask in the comments!