Look out for overheating batteries – Manything Review

The app works as advertised, and does a good job of detecting and reporting motion and it’s easy to select the amount of motion of concern and the areas to be excluded. The lag time isn’t fast enough to see who is at the door but nothing really is quick enough for that. The fatal flaw is the danger of leaving obsolete iPhones on a charger 7/24/365 for months or years. I have used 4 old iPhones for Manything cameras since the early days of Manything and 3 of them had their batteries overheat and swell up to the point of separating the front and/or back of the phone which is too close to a lithium fire for my comfort. None of these phones were in the sun, all were in well-ventilated air conditioned spaces with proper Apple chargers. I don’t know how long they had swollen batteries since they just kept on working and I unwittingly kept them on the charger (until one died last week). Needless to say, I no longer use old phones as Manything phone/cameras, they’ve all finally been recycled (which BTW required a trip to the Apple store, I couldn’t find anyone else to take an iPhone with a swollen battery). Too bad, I really found the app useful. This is an Apple problem not a Manything problem...Sort of.
Review by bbebb on Manything.