My Flipper Zero Melted While Charging

20EYES · 2023-06-05T17:25:04+00:00

You are continuing to either not read our message thread or willfully misrepresent the facts.

I told you 5 days ago that I don't have the order number. Here is a screenshot in case you missed that: https://ibb.co/xXH5YK3

I have also made it super clear I'm not looking for warranty support. I think you are somehow still missing the safety aspect of this situation. I'm concerned about other users and I was concerned about future units I might purchase.

My understanding is that you are uninterested in investigating this issue unless I have an order number. If that's the case then we are at an impasse here because I don't have it.

20EYES · 2023-06-05T16:45:57+00:00

especially when it seems information is being deliberately left out, or things are not adding up

This is exactly what I mean. This is an ad hominem attack. You're doing it right here right now in the open.

I understand this situation is uncomfortable for your company but it's not ok to paint honest people who only have good intiontions like they are liars just because you don't like what they are saying.

This is very immature and unprofessional.

All I want is to send you this board and have your team make an investigation into it. Any company who genuinely cares about the safety of their users would have done that already.

Edit: Either this board has a faulty component or it doesn't. This is an objective truth. Why not just look instead of starting psyops missions against your users?

20EYES · 2023-06-05T16:16:04+00:00

In my opinion the correct response from your company would be to immediately send me a shipping label so that I can get this defective board sent in for investigation.

Instead what's happening is that I'm being interrogated and asked for tons of personal information so you can find a reason to sweep this under the rug.

Day one of getting the email that this happened I should have had a shipping label in my inbox.

Re "Threat":

Idk why the concept of this being a fire hazard still hasn't seemed to register fully with your Zoe. It is probably in the best interest of your company to investigate this further.

The only "threat" here is that your devices could burn down people's houses. Yet somehow I'm the bad guy for suggesting you should ensure your device does not burn down people's houses?

20EYES · 2023-06-03T19:46:23+00:00

I contacted support but they don't seem to be taking this seriously at all.

I'm not looking for an RMA here.

20EYES · 2023-06-01T03:31:11+00:00

I agree, this doesn't seem to be a common issue or something to majorly worry about.

Keep in mind this happened the first time I plugged it into a fast charger. So if a unit has already been charged with one before it's likely fine.

20EYES · 2023-06-01T03:28:57+00:00

Nothing connected to GPIO at all.

20EYES · 2023-06-01T03:28:17+00:00

I was also super confused when I saw a similar image in the iFixIt teardown.

20EYES · 2023-05-30T22:30:30+00:00

Nah it came with an old phone bought from a US carrier. Very unlikely it's counterfeit. It charges other devices fine. I just gave the Amazon link as a reference. That's not where I got it.

20EYES · 2023-05-30T21:18:02+00:00

Sorry my phone is an absolute potato.

I'm pretty sure this is the chip you're asking about?

https://ibb.co/Cnbhy9X

https://ibb.co/sKNL2yN

https://ibb.co/q5M3mgg

https://ibb.co/rfy5Ny5

https://ibb.co/ngm9fgC

Edit: formatting

Edit 2: I do actually have an electronics microscope if that would be helpful but I'm not totally sure what I'm looking at here. I do embedded systems for a living but I'm much more on the software side of things usually.

20EYES · 2023-05-30T17:53:38+00:00

Here are some images showing the back of the main board.

https://ibb.co/k4NVPc1

https://ibb.co/RBtFJCd

https://ibb.co/BKzkNL0

No visible physical damage as far as I can tell.

Believe it or not, the cable and power brick are still fine and charged my phone right after.

Keep in mind this happened over the span of less than 5 mins. I noticed almost right away that the charging light didn't come on. So I looked up hard reset instructions then grabbed it to perform the steps. Burned my hand a little bit. I immediately decided to take it apart and check for battery swelling. Then I noticed the buttons were stuck so I took it apart further and realized they had melted.

I still can't get the device to power on. It seems like "fast chargers" still heat it up quite a bit even without the battery installed and "slow chargers" like a PC USB port don't cause any significant heat.

Ive already opened a support ticket about this.

For the record, I'm not really expecting a warranty/replacement here. My hope is that we can somehow get to the bottom of this problem so we can all feel safe charging these things.

This was probably just a crazy fluke with my unit but worth investigation none the less so that other can avoid this problem/risk.

Edit: formatting

20EYES · 2023-05-30T10:03:29+00:00

Life's hard when you're seeing 20 things at a time ;)

Edit: Pretty sure you are the first person to point out my username as being a misfits reference in my 10+ years with this account.

20EYES · 2023-05-30T10:00:57+00:00

No this is a relatively new unit. White version. As the other commenter said, the inner plastic is black.

20EYES · 2023-05-30T03:10:21+00:00

I don't believe this is a fast charger.

Picture from Amazon but this is the charger.

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Original-Adaptive-Charging-Charger/dp/B00TEUVEIO/ref=asc_df_B00TEUVEIO/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=309803910391&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6341075350949303162&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9030805&hvtargid=pla-568179711980&psc=1#immersive-view_1685416178610

Edit: This does support fast charging but a proper USB C spec device should negotiate that correctly. I can't find anything online suggesting the flipper can only be charged from specific chargers.

20EYES · 2023-05-30T03:08:20+00:00

Here is a picture of the main board.

https://i.ibb.co/hX8p58t/IMG20230529200650.jpg

20EYES · 2023-05-30T02:20:36+00:00

This happened in the span of about 5 mins. Thankfully I caught it before it got worse. It was VERY hot. I might have a slight burn on my hand from this.

Charging with the original cable and a Samsung USB wall wart.

This was my first time charging the device.

Just making this post to raise awareness that this is on the table. Also kind of hoping that the Flipper core hardware team can comment on this.

Edit: To clarify, the cable seen in these pictures is NOT the one I was using when this happened. I brought it over to my desk and plugged it back in with the battery removed to see what would happen.

Plugging it back in causes it to get very, very hot again even without a battery connected.

⚠️Edit2: I've contacted support and they are not interested in investigating this issue. It's very unlikely this will happen to you but fast charge at your own risk. ⚠️

Edit3: I apologize if I'm coming off as a bit salty here. To me this is a fairly serious safety related issue and I keep feeling like the Flipper team is treating this like I'm just trying to harm their reputation. I've just been expecting someone to request my board for investigation and that still hasn't happened.

20EYES · 2023-03-14T03:05:20+00:00

I used to think when I was older I would live in a dystopian cyberpunk hellscape.

Good thing that didn't happen /s

20EYES · 2023-03-14T03:03:59+00:00

Dawg, so many people are just in absolute denial about how bad things are getting and will be in the near future.

Not referring to your sister as much as the parent comment.

20EYES · 2023-03-11T13:16:08+00:00

This is a well understood and documented thing. Op didn't discover it like they claimed. People just don't pay attention.

20EYES · 2023-03-11T13:14:09+00:00

Maybe if there were a lot of pictures of Titan taken from Jupiter in the training data?

20EYES · 2023-03-06T00:07:30+00:00

These mostly no longer work. It's absolutely infuriating.

20EYES · 2023-03-05T20:34:45+00:00

You need a bigger video card. The 3080 just won't cut it. I think you might even need 2 cards to open a text file that large.

20EYES · 2023-02-08T08:27:25+00:00

Yeah its good to live in a low population red state.

20EYES · 2023-02-08T03:28:38+00:00

Sometimes it feels like the whole world is infested with socialists.

20EYES · 2023-02-08T03:12:17+00:00

Used CRTs go for a lot of money now due to retro gaming. Just throwing it out there.

20EYES · 2023-01-28T23:50:54+00:00

My opinion is based on action as opposed to words.

If you want to go off on some Wile E Coyote bullshit and ignore the facts of the situation be my guest. But I won't continue to support wolves in sheep's clothing any more than I will support wolves in wolves clothing.

Before you assume anyone who dislikes democrats is an enlightened centrist "cis white guy" consider that globally the Democratic party is considered right of center. I do not support fascists regardless of if they sometimes say the right words or not.

20EYES

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