Possible fake Samsung 30Q 18650?

No. 18650batterystore is legit.

I tried in the liitokala, but it was showing very inconsistent results. Of course I should have googled how to do this before I asked. So as I gather, you get a large resistor like 10ohm, do a quick voltage measurement with no load, then again quickly with load (like for a second or two), plug the values into a formula and you get the resistance. I wish the charger was more accurate and consistent.

Yes, many meters don’t give consistent readings. My Vapcell S4 Plus gives actually pretty steady results, but according to HKJ’s review the values are lower than reality. I have noticed that measured value does seem to change based on the charge level of the battery.

No worries, I just wasn’t sure I would recall it correctly and didn’t want to post something from memory.

Heres a link to the datasheet. Proving that Samsung 30Q 4 leg batteries are fake | E-Cigarette Forum

The second character “0’ in the first line should be a dead giveaway that they are real. Granted I have 30Qs from Liion wholesale (which is a ”trusted” dealer) that DO NOT follow the Samsung datasheet and they swear up and down that they are real.

One thing that guy says is that every Q30 he’s seen uses 3 legs on the top contact. These appear to only have two legs, IE one on each side. Does that suggest anything?

Why? IMO that doesn’t prove anything because any forger could know what the datasheet says and thus make their imitations look real.

Yours are sounding like fakes to me — unless others who recently purchased these cells from known reputable dealers have also seen this new difference.

That is ALL you need to know. Mooch has a lot of experience and in my 9 years of buying 30Q I have Never seen one with Two Legs.

There are photos on this forum of Two legs but I could not find them.

Hold on. Are all yours BT? They do not look that great, but what Two leafs are you talking about? I thought you were referencing that to the FT batteries?

No OEM cell manufacturer makes button top cells, all button tops are modified by someone. You would need to take that top layer of shrink and the button top to see. Most trusted retailers like Liionwholesale, illumn, and 18650batterystore add the button top, insulator, and a top layer of clear shrink ontop of a legitimate cell.

True, but I trust Mooch’s experience and his recommended retailers substantially more than I do your opinion.

I’m referring to the ones I just bought, you can see the photos in post #13 above

Have any of you seen any fakes that try to replicate the markings on the cell wall under the wrapper for a 30Q? Seems like more hassle for the fakers to go through. Thoughts?

If they exist, they havent been identified. Usually the fake cells can barely get the font and printing correct on the wrapper, I doubt they could make a perfect counterfeit without throwing a bunch of resources at it.

Yes, I saw them. I am not sure you can base a real or fake battery on its BT. Other factors like performance, labeling and info. under the label.

I see that you live in Australia. I can not recommend any credible dealers down under. There are many Aussies on here that could help you with that.I would recommend NOT to buy off of Ebay again.

By the looks of them, my guess is that they are fakes.

The bottom line here is to remove the clear jacket/button top to check the legs on the top of the cell. 4 legs = fake. All the other markings look correct, the 141 is just a manufacturing batch number.

Fair enough — but I really wasn’t questioning Mooch’s recommendations of li-ion retailers.

Well, I was reluctant to do any surgery to the battery. However I did end up buying some more batteries from a reputable seller in Australia (www.techaroundyou.com) which has been recommended on this forum. They arrived and I ran a simple test on them to compare. The short version is that the ones I got from ebay seem legit.

I ordered 3 batteries from this techardoundyou store and I noticed two were batch 141 just like the ones I got from ebay, and one was batch 136. So a very slight difference. Examining them closely, I noticed the batch 141 batteries from ebay looked identical in every way to the batch 141 ones from techaroundyou. Even down to the little unusual looking “Q” character. The battery from batch 136 had a slightly different printing on it which was more consistent with images of batch 136 Q30 batteries I’ve seen online.

What I did was get two 10 watt 1 ohm resistors in parallel, thus producing ~ 0.5 Ohms of resistance. Then while measuring the voltage on the cell I briefly completed the circuit to get some current flowing, and then measured the voltage results. I also ran it through a crude amp meter I had to measure peak amps - not sure how accurate it is since the voltage it reported was vastly different to what my multimeter said. Anyway the results were very consistent across all the batteries:

Initial voltage: 4.18
Voltage under load: between 3.78 and 3.83
Resistance: 0.5 Ohms approx
Current Measured in my power meter: between 6.67 - 6.70 amps
Calculated internal resistance: 0.045 and 0.053

Just for fun I did the same test on some old trustfire and ultrafire batteries I had laying around. They immediately went down from about 4.1v to 2.4v or tripped the protection built in. Terrible.

Along with the Q30’s from techaroundyou, I also purchased some Sony VTC4 high current batteries. They performed basically identically to the Q30’s, presumably because I’m no where near pulling enough amps to make the Q30’s start stressing and sagging voltage too much.

So to my very basic judgement, they seem like legit cells assuming the techaroundyou cells are legit, since they seem to perform identically under about 7 amp loads.

Thoughts?

That’s a good test and looks like you got genuine cells. :+1:

That’s normal. The leads (even good ones) start to become a significant issue when measuring this kind of current with a multimeter, even if the advertised allowable current on the MM is “10A” (pretty common).

I have one MM (a cheap one but it works good enough for this purpose) that I have modded for this reason. I soldered short thick leads directly to the PCB and it is basically dedicated to reading tailcap current draws up to 10A or so, and does a pretty good job.

I ended up stripping the top layer and welded button top off of ALL of my 30Qs from batches 136 and 141(multiple sellers for both batches)

All were 3 leg, all had proper lot codes except for my most recent liionwholesale batch, all measured similar IR on my MiBoxer C412. I dont have any special load testers, but they seem to be ok.

Regardless, im done with the 30q. Ill be doing VT6s with solder blobs the next time around.

Do any of the ones you’ve acquired have the writing on the can under the wrap (especially the one with batch 136)?

I have a couple of 30Qs bought from ebay.au (not techaroundyou though) that seem mostly OK but I have had doubts. They have 3-prong top caps that look identical other Samsung flat tops, and the writing on the wrap shows no variation in typography of the kind that others have reported. They are marked batch 136 like other 30Qs. When new they tested slightly lower capacity than other 30Qs (maybe 7-8% down) but their internal resistance was very similar to other flat-top 30Qs. They seem to deliver good current in use, but that is a subjective assessment and not tested. My main concern has been the absence of writing on the can inside the wrap, like on other Samsungs.

Capacity and resistance testing done on an Opus BT-C3100. My capacity measurements are usually about 3% higher than HKJ’s at the same current draw (done at 1000mA). I have found that resistance measurement on the Opus is much more consistent and closer to those reported by HKJ if I maintain firm pressure on the slide against the back of the cell.

So my question is: is the absence of writing on the cans inside the wrap significant?

andygs, unwrapping at least one of your eBay bought 30Q button tops can shed some definitive light.

This is the sort of cell can markings Samsung 30Q 29E O:) cells come printed with:

Sooner or later you should buy some heat shrinkable sleeves/wraps and learn to wrap batteries anyway, imho.

Tue, 05/19/2020 - 13:47