Proper way to mothball a smartphone, temporarily (I hope)

[Dark Penguin]

Well, as luck would have it, I seem to have bricked my phone. You know the Samsung Galaxy line that got the OEM sued by Apple, because they were sort of iPhone-shaped, and, incidentally because they are sort of insanely great phones--enough that Apple must have been worried that Samsung might steal their lunch money. You know, the ones with the 8M rear cam, and gigs and gigs of internal memory and data storage, and dual core processors? That phone. And I've bricked mine. If I'm lucky it's only a soft brick and I'll be able to fix it someday, somehow. My prior phone, and the one I may have to use in the interim, is an entry level LG model that doesn't deserve to be mentioned by name in the same post as my Galaxy.

Assuming I will be able to fix it eventually, how long can I just leave it in a drawer before I have to worry about the battery swelling or popping? I had that happen with another phone, which I had before I had the LG. It was mostly left in a drawer for about a year and powered down, except occasionally when I wanted to take pictures. When I opened the back I found that the battery was all bulging and almost forcing the cover off. Obviously I'd rather this didn't happen with the bricked phone.

 

[Dark Penguin]

I've managed to fix my phone; the details are explained in the other thread.

Still, it would be good to know the proper long-term storage procedure. Should anything again go wrong with my Galaxy*, old LG phone would still have come in handy as an iPod-ish device when I'm in range of a network. So I'd like to be sure it will be useable if and when.

*that is, if I should screw it up again. I don't think it'll go wrong by itself.