PlayStation 4 will no longer be rendered useless should its internal CMOS battery suddenly die
The PS4 internal battery issue has apparently been fixed by Sony.
PlayStation 4 will no longer be rendered useless should its internal Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) battery suddenly die.
Dubbed the ‘CBOMB’, the issue was discovered about five months back that both PS4 relies on its internal CMOS battery to communicate with the PlayStation Store, PlayStation Network, and other related online PlayStation services to enable the ability to run games. The same issue also appears to affect the PS5’s CMOS battery after a “volunteer-based preservation team” Does It Play? performed a test on their PS5.
However, a new 9.0.0 firmware update for the console appears to have fixed the issue, according to YouTuber Destruction Games.
Tested it on my PS4 with a dead battery and games are no longer crashing on startup and I can even earn trophies, they claimed, while noting that the dates of when a trophy is earned will be blank.
Prior to this update, if the battery was removed or dies, the console will ask players to manually enter the date and time when it boots, and then attempts to sync the date and time online via the PlayStation Network.
However, if Sony were to shut down the PlayStation Network in the future or even if the network crashed for any reason, the inability of the console to connect and sync would mean no games would be playable for over 115million PS4 consoles that have been sold.
Sony has recently performed a u-turn on some of its anti-game preservation policies. In July, Sony was going to shut down the PS Store on PS3, PSP and PS Vita, but thankfully, it changed its mind allowing PS Store to stay operational on the PS3 and PS Vita.
Developer and YouTuber Modern Vintage Gamer also cover the CMOS battery issue in detail in the below video, while demonstrating just how complex it would be to replace the battery manually, since it would require tearing down the hardware to get to the motherboard that houses the battery. The firmware update fortunately means PS4 owners should no longer have to worry about this issue.