I was correct.
Furthermore I can identify the Genuine Canon NB-4L batteries in my collection blind. They all read >11K Ohms at room temp. All of the clones read 10K Ohms exactly.
Note: The component marked "103" is a 10K Ohm resistor, not a thermistor.
Finally I grabbed the circuit board out of the clone and strapped it the side of the kettle, and waited for it to boil, while watching the reading of the multimeter with the probes across the "thermistor", the reading didn't budge from 10K .... The kettle boiled and the board was way too hot to touch.
Moral of the story is, if you buy cheap batteries, the chances are they don't have any thermal runaway protection, or to be strictly accurate, they don't tell the camera if they start to overheat, which I guess is not quite the same thing, since all the camera can do is shut down, it can't put out the fire
.
The battery protection circuit and the mosfets will however protect the cell from over charge and deep discharge, so in that sense things are relatively safe.
One more observation, the board is very well constructed, and there are a couple gold plated test points across the "thermistor", so perhaps there is a version which does include a real thermistor.
Why would they do this you ask? Money of course,
thermistors are much more expensive than
resistors.
