While OnePlus released its new Nord CE smartphone, where the CE stands for Core Edition, a Redditor has created a CE version of the Samsung Galaxy S10+. However, in this case, the CE stands for “Chonk Edition” as the device packs a humongous 14,000mAh battery at the back! Well, if that does not surprise you, I don’t know what will.
Developed by a Redditor known as u/T-VIRUS691 on Reddit, the power modded Samsung Galaxy S10+ features a thick battery unit attached to its back. The Redditor says that Samsung would not give him an S10+ with a 10,000mAh battery. So, he himself made a 14,000mAh battery for his device.
Now, for the unaware, Galaxy S10+ was Samsung’s flagship device when it launched back in 2019. It features a much smaller 4,100mAh battery and the Snapdragon 855 SoC. So, to make the Galaxy S10+ Chonk Edition, the Redditor simply got a 10,000mAh battery unit from the third-party marketplace and attached it to his device via some wires. As a result, he ended up with a massive 14,000mAh battery, by combining his 10,000mAh cell with the device’s 4,100mAh unit.
Furthermore, the guy 3D printed a case with a dedicated cutout for the cameras to cover the battery unit. However, even with the case, the device looks quite chunky. Nonetheless, one of the perks with the device, as per the Redditor, is that he can charge up his wife’s S10 5G with his S10+ without losing much power.
Now, you might be wondering – With the massive battery at the back, how do the NFC and wireless charging work? Well, unfortunately, these features will not work until the Redditor finds a way to put the wireless charging coil on top of the battery by making an extension cable for it, which he says he is currently working on.
After attaching the battery to his device, the man also drained it to calibrate the battery meter. During the time, he used continuous tethering, watched YouTube videos, and kept the screen brightness to maximum. You can check out the battery graph right below. The first half of the graph shows the battery usage of the original battery, which was drained to match the voltage of the 10,000mAh cell that was added later.
Now, if you are intrigued by the device and want to power mod your own smartphone, we would suggest you not to as it requires the necessary expertise to do so. Instead, you can check out some power banks for your device to deal with your battery anxiety.
Glad to know that my post has made it this far, here’s a bit of backstory as to why I did it
I originally had a ulefone power 5, which contains a 13,000mah battery, but the performance left a lot to be desired, I also preordered the energizer Power Max 18K pop, but they refused to send me one when the crowdfunding campaign ended
In general I was just sick to death of companies copying Apple’s habit of prioritising thinness over functionality, your phone battery’s service life is directly affected by how many times you have to recharge it each day, if you charge it half as often, the service life doubles, and since phone batteries are getting more difficult to replace (permanent adhesive.etc) I wanted one with the biggest battery I could find, but I also wanted flagship performance, and creature comforts like wireless charging, NFC, expandable storage, a high resolution AMOLED display, and a headphone jack
upon hearing of the samsung galaxy M51 which contains a 7000mah battery, I noticed that they use what appears to be the same power delivery IC for the battery controller in many of their devices, and assumed correctly that I could add a bigger battery to one of their more premium devices
I was choosing between the galaxy note 9 and the S10 plus, but ultimately chose the S10 plus because one of my mates was selling his, and he offered it for an unbeatable price, I then grabbed a 10,000mah cell off ebay, 3D printed a custom back cover that would house the battery (since it would effectively replace the glass back) and after about a week or so of calibration, it came good and I can reliably get 2 days out of it (with around 25h total SOT) when using it normally (30% brightness, tethering only used when necessary.etc)
I did have to remove the 10,000mah cell and run at a lower capacity for the first few days, with a second S10 plus battery (total of 8000mah) then increase it in steps as the IC learned the new capacity (a technique I borrowed from my experience in modifying laptop batteries, which can be found by searching “thinkpad super battery” on Google
But eventually I was able to reconnect the 10,000mah cell and use the device normally, on a day with more reasonable use (though still heavy by most people’s standards) I can get almost 3 days of total runtime (total runtime of 61h, with 25 of those hours being screen on usage)
I have also fixed the NFC and wireless charging issues as well by soldering wires to the contact pads on the original coil, then soldering the other end of those wires to a contact pad that I harvested from a donor NFC module (so I didn’t have to solder directly to the logic board) now wireless charging, NFC (including Samsung pay and reverse wireless charging) all work perfectly
Oh and for the record, charging the wife’s S10 5G fron dead to 100% only uses around 35% of my phones battery capacity, fully charging my galaxy watch with reverse wireless charging uses around 10%, and charging my galaxy buds takes between 5-10% on average
This is not a mod that I would recommend most people attempt, as one wrong move and you could fry your device, I’m an experienced tinkerer who has been doing exactly this sort of mod on laptops, older phones, and many other devices for over 10 years, and even I was actually sweating while doing this, kinda like when a surgeon is performing a difficult operation (I was doing this sort of thing since I was a kid, my first achievement was at age 12, powering up my GameBoy color with a Nokia phone battery when my mum took all my AA batteries away, all the way back in 2005)
in addition, sourcing a genuine 3.85V cell of that capacity was difficult, its not recommended to use a standard 3.7V battery for this project since the full charge voltage of modern phones easily hits 4.4V, although it would probably work for a while, a 3.7V battery will degrade rapidly under these conditions unless you only charge it to 80% or around 4.2V