Laptop Battery Enshittification

Last week, two of my refurbished Thinkpads, an X220 and an X13, both with Manjaro Linux, stopped charging their third-party batteries (one is seemingly at 70%, but actually empty; the other remains stubbornly at 0%). The X220 charges an old Lenovo-branded battery fine (to its maximum 25% capacity). I cannot rule out two batteries malfunctioning at the same time, of course. But I was suspicious. It turns out that Lenovo's computers are known to reject charging third-party batteries (through a chip, a whitelist / blacklist in the EC, whatever). Lenovo put an appropriate warning in the documentation: "The system does not support unauthorized batteries or batteries designed for other systems. If an unauthorized battery or a battery designed for another system is installed, the system will not charge" (X250 Safety, Warranty and Setup Guide). The catch is that it is not possible anymore to buy a Lenovo-authorized OEM battery for Thinkpad X220 or X13: they have met their EOL, "end of life". (Not to mention that it is extremely hard to find information about buying such replacements in the EU.) Now I know what enshittification feels like. It stinks. As I said, I cannot completely rule out that the two third-party batteries malfunctioned at the same time. But I also cannot not consider a possibility that the third parties did not renew their "authorizations" with Lenovo, or that they chose to pay only for two-year authorization period (both batteries are from 2024, both have stopped charging the same week). What pisses me off especially is that I chose refurbished for environmental reasons. And, even so, I would be quite ready to dish out more money for an OEM replacement battery. The company does not care. It is a good business strategy, I admit: why take my €200 for a battery when they can take my €2000 for a whole new device (which I would also be able to use only for 2-5 years, and then the battery would need replacement, and then...). You can even say that Lenovo played relatively nice: by rejecting to charge third-party batteries, they did not brick the whole device. They just created a small inconvenience – I simply have to have the laptop plugged in all the time. A small inconvenience... so far. 

 

(Battery” by Andy Armstrong, CC BY-SA 2.0)