From the Pinephone wiki: "Battery: Lithium-ion, rated capacity 2800mAh (10.64Wh), typical capacity 3000mAh (11.40Wh) (nominally replaceable with any Samsung J7 form-factor battery)"
I guess they're sourcing unmarked Samsung compatible batteries which should be all protected, where should equals to 99.999%.
If that's the case, then there's no way malicious software or even firmware could damage it. The protection in those batteries is implemented hardware level; the chip contained in the cell will cut off its connection if it detects either an excessive discharge current (to avoid potential explosion), excessive voltage discharge (to avoid chemical degradation and subsequent charging attempts related dangers), excessive temperature (again to avoid explosion), excessive charging current (... explosion). They are all detected outside of system control, so no need for panic.
Also, there's no protection against excessive temperature in the battery protection circuit's specification, so not sure where you're taking your information from. It would be nice if people actually used the datasheets that are freely available, since Pinephone is mostly open HW, instead of proclaiming random generalities.
Last time I read about PinePhone, the topic was kill switches hardwired to chip enable pins that also make it impossible to sleep peripherals from main SoC. That was only “weird but okay”, but personally, with this discussions going, this phone and associated ROMs aren’t something I consider anymore.
Despite similarity in name they are very different beasts. I'm not all that afraid of a LiIon pack unless it's been sorely mistreated or is a huge EV pack or something. On the other hand I treat LiPos with the utmost respect and get them far away from anything at the first sign of bloating or accidental shorting.
Obviously, no pressure, but figured I'd express the interest
For longevity this is true, but even the while overcharging the risk of a fire isn't that high nowadays (from what I've seen close to 0 with cylindrical cells). Some pouch cells are even fine when punctured.
Of course I want these issues to be fixed to keep Pinephones working and AFAIK the batteries in the Pinephone are of an older model, so maybe they're a bit more dangerous. The author definitely has a point.
These battery management ICs will permanently shut down the battery off above a dangerous temperature threshold. Better to kill a battery than to risk a fire.