An obituary to a tablet in its prime

Distended innards

For the past few days, I noticed that the cover case of my Huawei MediaPad M3 Lite 8 was not closing properly. I put it down to the fitting and paid no further attention to it. Eventually, I decided to have a closer look, the screen on the folding side of the case was bulging out for reasons I could not say.

Trying to push the screen back into place simply led to the bulge coming back with a vengeance. That is when I learnt of one of the drawbacks of Lithium-Ion batteries. They have a tendency to bulge out, explode and catch fire.

Apparently, sometimes the chemical reaction within the battery cells which produces gas is not recycled within the electrolytic process leading to the expansion of the fuel cell and affecting the integrity and safety of the battery. [DfR Solutions: Why Do Lithium-Ion Batteries Swell?]

This is put under more stress when the battery is being charged. Sadly, after just 26 months of usage, this is the end-of-life of the device as there are no user-serviceable parts, for the battery is built-in and it is well outside warranty, I need to check that.

Unintended upgrade

Whilst it has been a constant bedside companion especially for radio play during the night amongst other things. It has been a gadget worthy of a Swiss Army Knife accolade, just because of the versatility of apps and functionality I have gotten out of it. It would be consigned now to the graveyard of tablets gone out of service because of all sorts of reasons. The third in 8 years.

In retrospect, it probably was ready for a replacement as Huawei were not offering upgrades to the operating system and user interfaces. It was stuck on Android 7.0 Nougat when many new products are now on Android 10, with Android 11 being released only in February. [Wikipedia: Android version history]

Whilst I await a more current replacement, I have backed up the tablet, tried to extract enough configurations from it and left it to fully discharge. It’s a shame that rather than then CPU, the battery is really the life-giving force of most electronic devices, take out the battery and that’s the end. It is like the human version of cardiovascular disease with the risk of a heart attack more likely than not. C’est la vie!

The side of the screen being pushed out by a swollen battery.

My trust tablet lying in state.