Battery distorted causing glitching in touchpad

Hi

I'm posting this in case it helps anyone else diagnose an apparent touchpad fault.

I bought a new Inspiron 16 7620 2-in-1 about three months ago. Around a week ago; I started to notice that the touchpad was becoming less responsive and increasingly 'glitchy'. It was particularly hard to left click, and scrolling would often result in the cursor highlighting text.

I searched for and ran all the updates available, but they didn't fix the issue. Eventually, and on a hunch, I took the back off the laptop to check the battery.

In the past, I've had batteries fail, where they swell and put pressure on the back of the touchpad causing glitching, but this is a new laptop and the battery healthcheck was fine, so I wasn't expecting a fault.

Pulling the back off, I noticed that the battery in this laptop is much longer than the one in my old Inspiron 7586 2-in-1 and is unsupported along the lower edge. There are screws supporting it at the sides and across the top, but not at the centre in the bottom. Pulling up on the battery; it flexes noticeably at the centre along its lower edge.

After pulling up on the centre bottom edge of the battery a little, I refitted the rear cover and tested. The touchpad issues have gone.

I suspect that the case back got squeezed while travelling and that pushed the battery in to contact with the bottom of the touchpad.

Given the length of the battery (it runs the width of the laptop), leaving it unsupported along the bottom edge seems like a poor design, but the fix was easy, so I'm posting it here in case it helps anyone else fix a glitchy touchpad.

Andy