JX's Blog

Symptom My Logitech G603 mouse started draining battery really quickly a while back. Initially, I thought it was perhaps a faulty battery, but after it went through a pair of fully charged AA batteries after a single week, I knew something was up. I’ve found no cases online indicating the fix, all of them suggesting it to be a motherboard issue. Upon powering it with my bench power supply, it draws 0.05A. I compared it with other wireless mice that I had, and they all only drew 0.01A. Diagnosis I turned on the mouse with my thermal camera and saw a component heating up. Taken on my cheap mobile thermal camera Marked A15, labelled Q10 The corresponding component is circled in the image above. It was hard to find the replacement part with no schematics and just a 'A15" marking on the transistor (excuse the ugly soldering, I desoldered it prior to test other similar transistors I had). I tried searching on Taobao, and in the end found a matching part number: PJA3415 The chip m...

A Guide for CR2032, CR2016, CR2025, and CR2450 Models Many sellers on platforms like Shopee, Lazada, and other online marketplaces list Panasonic coin batteries at suspiciously low prices — but many of these are counterfeit . In this post, we’ll help you learn how to spot fake Panasonic CR2032, CR2016, CR2025, and CR2450 batteries , and avoid buying poor-quality fakes. TL;DR: Quick Tips to Spot Fake Panasonic Batteries 1. Check for presence of date code etched at bottom (make sure it’s not laser etched) 2. Check texture of text on the face of the battery  3. Look for Inner circle ring (not very obvious) 4. If considering other brands, make sure not Sony. Sony cells with recent dates are all fake, Sony sold its division to Murata. Why Packaging Isn't Reliable Anymore Checking the battery packaging alone may not be a good indicator as packaging can change, and there are actually original cells that come in trays (bulk pack).  There’s also instances where the packaging is not o...

In my previous post , I talked about how some counterfeit cables have identical looking lightning connectors. This is part 2 of the previous post. Since I last posted, I have gotten my hands on those identical-looking cables and we shall compare them today. A couple of my friends told me they found original cables (or so they think) on Carousell. I have since tested them with my tester, and they are all counterfeit. I am not sure how many sellers on Carousell are selling fake cables as original, but since the cost price is much more for the true MFi ones, I would guess that the majority of those being sold on Carousell are counterfeits.  It frustrates me when I see those sellers get so many positive reviews profiting away from selling fake cables, while I can't be as competitive as them selling cables with original lightning heads due to the higher cost. It sure was very tempting to follow the footsteps of other sellers and sell the counterfeit cables, but I don't think ...

In this lengthy post, I will share on how I got about upgrading the storage on my iPhone 6s to 256GB, which might be helpful if you're considering doing the same.​ So, why did I want to upgrade the storage myself? Here my long story begins. TL;DR, my iPhone was slowing down and running out of space. Last year, I installed an aftermarket high capacity battery from China (its legit, it did help improve battery life) to replace the old failing one. Following that, I heard about the throttling issue on iOS 11 and thought the high capacity the battery is showing might be interfering with iOS, making it confused and in turn throttle the CPU. However, after the throttle issue was fixed, I still felt that my phone was kind of slow, and thought something else must be causing the slowdown. I did some research and found that larger capacity iPhones had a faster nand, and that the performance of flash storage tends to degrade at about 70% full. At that point in time, I only had ab...

I’m sure you’ve seen a fake lightning cable before, and differentiating between fake and authentic seem pretty straightforward. Even Apple’s website shows you how to tell.  But.. I’ve noticed that the fakes are looking increasingly like the authentic ones. So how can you tell? The easy to tell ones These are the basic ones. The lightning connector is not in a single metal casing. These are pretty straightforward to differentiate. These are the basic ones. The lightning connector is not in a single metal casing. These are pretty straightforward to tell.  Looking at the above picture, it seems pretty easy to tell eh? But nah, that's just the tip of the iceberg. I’m starting to see some with a single metal piece that almost seems authentic until you look very closely. Not so easy to tell ones There was once I bought an ‘authentic’ cable from someone on Carousell. The box looked identical to the ones in Apple stores, with the exception of the blue sticker ...