Dell XPS 13 2015 Skylake Infinity Display Owners Thread

You had luck. The original battery no. 5K9CP aka JHXPY (56Wh 90V7W) is out of stock since October. No information about future availability from Dell warehouse.
I need to remove the dangerous battery, but i do not want to replace it by a possibly dangerous non-OEM battery.
Not happy.

 

Well, that's pretty unacceptable. I think that if you have the chance to speak with a technician he/she should provide you or any other customer with an alternative. This laptop is only 3 years old!

 

Bought a replacement battery from ebay, because no other option available.
The battery is like the original numbered 5K9CP aka JHXPY (56Wh 90V7W).
In BIOS setting there is another option for advanced battery settings named "Peak charge".
Afaik "Peak charge" battery settings are part of Latitude laptops.
It is disabled, but when it gets past 12:00pm the battery is not detected anymore and i get an LED error code (white/amber).
12:00pm is the default Peak charge setting in BIOS. Tried another settings and reflashing BIOS, resetting BIOS,..... no luck.
No charging possible every day. i need to unplug the replacement battery every day to get it recognized again.
I hate this laptop and DELL.

This workaround seems to recognize replacement batteries for several days, but still getting battery error / not charging after few days:

- Enable USB-C Powershare in BIOS
- Set all times in Peak Charge Settings (BIOS) to the same time (e.g. 09:30am) and set Battery treshold to 100%
- Disable Peak Charge (uncheck)
- Disable all other battery optimizations (Power charge,...)

 

I like my XPS 9350, so when it started developing problems I decided to repair it. Even if it's still in warranty, I'm not sure I'd want to send it in to Dell. I did that before and that took a while. The repairs are not earth shattering in any way but I thought I'll post something in case it helps someone:

1. Battery change: my old battery started swelling some time back. I noticed that the bottom edge of the trackpad, which is normally slightly recessed, was protruding upwards instead. I bought, tried and returned a bunch of batteries from Amazon and Ebay. I tried a couple of JD25G versions, but the issues I ran into were
- can charge successfully, can keep the laptop going after unplugging from AC, but cannot boot laptop by itself (without AC). I suspect the output voltage was just not high enough.
- I *think* I received one which worked, but the battery capacity was significantly below the original's (use Window 10's battery report to check: https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/generate-battery-report-windows-10)
- just DOA.

This was the one that worked for me:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DFRQG1J/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I had asked the seller about the capacity and voltage output for the battery (the question and answer is still in the Q&A section). The battery arrived with the Dell logo on it, and it has worked flawlessly. I saw someone post a review saying the battery isn't genuine and doesn't work, but it does for me.

2. Keyboard change: about a month or so ago the number keys started acting strange: some numbers would have a delay after tapping before showing up. Sometimes a number would be repeated twice. Sometimes nothing shows up. I swapped the keyboard with this one:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-N...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

It has worked without issues. The disassembly and reassembly took a couple of hours, essentially the battery, speakers, multimedia board, motherboard, wifi card, fan had to be taken out before the keyboard can be accessed. This video helped walk through the steps involved:


It turned out that I could place all the screws associated with each step (e.g. speaker removal) into a pile, as the screws seem to be similar (or largely similar) for each. I didn't have to track each individual screw's original location.

3. Thermal compound change: I noticed that the top of the keyboard runs warm sometimes. I don't know if that has anything to do with the number keys going wonky. I used HWInfo to track temperatures, and it seems at times the CPUs reached the 90s and even 100C. I thought I would try cleaning out the old thermal compound and put some Arctic Silver on it.

Opening the bottom case again, I saw that two of the heatsink screws were stripped. Probably due to some Dell tech in a past repair. I bought Vampliers:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LMMU2HG/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I wasn't sure the pliers would extract the stripped screws, but they did, immediately. I was pleasantly surprised. I found some replacement screws from a Lenovo screw pack they sent me a while ago, I believe the screws are of type M2x3mm.

The heatsink seems quite soft in that it bends easily. It didn't come into contact with the fan as well as it should, so I bent it till it did. The old thermal compound also looked like it's mostly dried out. I cleaned it up and put Arctic Silver on the chips. Right now it seems to run about 10C cooler, I'll keep an eye on it some more.

That's it, I hope the info helps someone.

 

Which BIOS battery optimization settings are available with your replacement battery?
With my replacement battery there is now a new setting "Peak charge" in BIOS power management menu.
With the original battery the setting "Primary battery charge configuration" was available instead.
Maybe some replacement batteries ship with a wrong battery management chip (from the Latitude line with "Peak charge" option) which causes the battery-LED blink error.

 

A few photos of my battery-related config are attached.

I didn't actually consider changing any config when I swapped batteries. My intention was simply to use another that is the same as the original. If there are config changes needed, I think the seller ought to bring it up. If the seller says it should be a direct replacement and it does not perform that way, I'll return it. It's a battery, it's supposed to be plug-and-play.

On a separate note, the temperatures didn't seem to go down as much, I was over optimistic before

 

Thanks for the screenshot. Now i see.
Here is a screenshot of my bios battery setting with the replacement battery.

XPS 13 charge options are replaced by a new "ExpressCharge" setting.

Returned the battery, XPS 13 works without battery installed if AC or USB-C-power attached. (No errors )

 

How we can get all screen notification (like volume, brightness etc) back after reinstall Windows. Thanks.
PS Btw... just installed W7x64

 

What is your screen ID (device manager) - SHP1420, SHP1421 or SHP144A?

 

Dell NL offered me a replacement battery for just under 60€ (or to have them send a tech out to replace it for around 200€) so I will finally get around to replacing my battery, which I have been meaning to do for quite a while. I haven't done any tech repair in several years, but it doesn't seem particularly hard, and the price they quoted me was actually cheaper than almost all of the non-original batteries I've seen, so I'm happy I took the time to ask for a quote.