The replacement Battery shows on coconut manufacturingdate 2011-01-03

Hi Eric,

Sorry for the late response, but we had to figure out what’s happening ourselves first, as this was the first time someone reported a date earlier than the existence of their model.

There are two main components of a battery: the lithium-ion battery cells and the PCB (printed circuit board). The lithium-ion battery cells on these replacement batteries are all newly manufactured and typically shouldn’t be older than 6 months from date of purchase. This is the consumable component of the battery that gets depleted over time and determines the battery life. The PCB is often assembled using an IC that could be from old inventory, as our supplier sources original ICs rather than using poorer quality aftermarket copies.

All coconutBattery is doing is reading the data on the IC of the PCB, including the manufacturing date. The age of that component is inconsequential to the performance of the battery. Suppliers in China have faced challenges sourcing ICs lately as they’re mostly manufactured in Taiwan, so they may have had to use older ICs to compensate. Either way, it shouldn’t raise any concerns as far as functionality/performance.

We asked our supplier to do some research into this issue: It seems that there is also a problem/bug with that particular software application – coconutBattery – incorrectly reporting manufacturing dates. They ran some tests on both new batteries and a few older ones: other testing equipment reported the correct manufacturing date, whereas coconutBattery was reporting dates incorrectly (particularly with the latest version running on Mac OS X Big Sur, but it may extend to other apps/OS versions).

Our primary Mac laptop battery supplier does program the current manufacturing date on the IC for those batteries as they’re assembled —  that isn’t necessarily the case with all the other types of batteries we resell, though.

So, to sum that up for you: it may be possible that the IC in your battery is older, but in this case, it seems more probable that coconutBattery is reporting an incorrect manufacturing date due to a bug in that software. However, the age of that component is inconsequential to the performance of the battery. What really matters is the consumable component of the battery, and we can assure that it isn’t older than 6 months from your date of purchase and shouldn’t raise any concerns as far as functionality goes.

We’d suggest you keep using the current battery, and if ever you should notice its performance or functionality decline in an unexpected way, our CS team will be there for you.

We really hope that helps and of course, we’re here for additional questions!

All the best,

Jarred Stelfox