About this replacement
Lenovo I200 / I520 — 3.7V Li-ion Replacement Battery (BL160)
This is a 3.7V, 1000mAh Li-ion replacement battery for the Lenovo I200 and I520 smartphones. It uses OEM part number BL160 and slots into either handset using the original rear-cover latch. Swap it when the original cell no longer holds a usable charge through a normal day.
- I200 and I520 compatibility: Both models share the BL160 form factor — same 53.37 × 9.72 × 4.10 mm footprint, same 3.7V nominal rail, and the same connector pinout. No adapter or modification needed.
- Bench tested on actual hardware: We cycled the cell through charge and discharge on a Lenovo I520 test unit. The BMS accepted the charge handshake cleanly, held voltage above 3.5V under steady screen and call load, and tripped the low-voltage cutoff at the correct threshold without early dropout.
- Fuel gauge recalibration on first cycle: On first use after installation, disable fast charging if available and run one full discharge down to auto-off, then charge uninterrupted to 100%. This gives the fuel gauge IC a clean reference curve against the new cell before the OS starts drawing on that data for percentage estimates.
Sudden shutdown at 20–30% on the Lenovo I200 and I520
This happens when the cell voltage collapses faster than the fuel gauge IC predicts under a high-current spike — typically the modem transmitting or the screen at full brightness. The old cell's discharge curve is baked into the coulomb counter, so the OS shows 25% right up until the voltage drops below the BMS cutoff threshold. After installing the BL160 replacement, run one complete discharge-to-shutdown cycle followed by a full uninterrupted charge. The fuel gauge IC will rewrite its reference curve against the new cell, and percentage readout will stabilise by the second full cycle.
Phone shows wrong battery percentage after the cell swap
The fuel gauge IC on both the I200 and I520 stores a learned discharge curve from the original cell. When a new cell goes in, the IC keeps using the old curve, so the percentage shown on screen does not match actual remaining capacity — it may jump, drop suddenly, or read 100% while the phone is nearly flat. Force a recalibration by draining the phone fully until it shuts off, then charging in one session to 100% without interruption. After that single cycle, the coulomb counter recalibrates to the BL160's actual discharge profile. Expect the readout to stabilise to within a few percent of true capacity from that point forward.