Here's a test worth doing right now: take the battery out of your PSP, place it flat on a table, and try to spin it. If it spins like a top, the cell has swollen — and a swollen lithium battery is not a "later" problem. Every original PSP battery still in circulation is 12–20 years old, far beyond the designed life of a lithium-ion cell.
Why old PSP batteries swell
Lithium-ion cells degrade chemically with age, whether used or not. Gases build up inside the pouch, the casing bulges, and in bad cases the swelling cracks the PSP's battery door or pushes against the mainboard. A swollen cell can also vent or, rarely, catch fire — which is why we tell every customer: stop using a swollen battery today, and never charge it overnight unattended.
What a replacement costs
At RetroBytes a PSP battery replacement is ₹1,049 including fitting and a charge-cycle test, for all models — 1000, 2000, 3000, E1004 and Go. We verify real capacity before the console ships back, because the marketplace is flooded with "3600mAh" stickers on cells that measure under 900mAh in testing.
Why marketplace batteries disappoint
The ₹300–500 batteries on shopping apps are usually recycled cells in new plastic. Common results we see on customer consoles: two-hour runtimes, batteries that die at 40%, cells that won't hold charge after a month, and — the expensive one — leakage that corrodes the battery terminals and requires board-level repair. A proper cell costs more once and ends the problem.
Pair it smartly
If your PSP is coming to the bench anyway, a battery pairs naturally with a screen replacement or a deep clean (₹499) — one courier trip, one teardown, everything renewed. See the full price list on our PSP repair page.