Re: When will the industry standardize on a single battery, or batteries?
 

I'm skeptical about batteries, because it's still a very much developing and competitive field, and the sizes are evolving. However, at least for chargers there is progress:

http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/cont...41456-145.html

Re: When will the industry standardize on a single battery, or batteries?
 

There is one very important thing to underline - the battery technology determines the phone, rarely does this happen other way. The battery voltage defines the 'native' Vcc for the device and also the charges electronics, etc.

Consider this - I had 4 mobile phones and each had not only different batteries, but also battery *technologies*. The first one was Ni-Cd (stone-age, I know), then came Ni-MH, Li-po and Li-ion.

You can't swap batteries around because the chargers in the set are made for a particular electrochemical characteristic of the batteries. E.g. You couldn't stick a Li-ion battery in your 1997 (probably) NiMH powered phone no matter how good of a standard we had.

Ever wondered why AA batteries are not used in consumer electronics that need a lot of juice ? The old standard does not support the form factor and is electrically incompatible with newer battery tech. That's why the best you have now in AA is NiMH, which has a significantly lower capacity than Li-ion (and if phones standardized on such a format, you'd have to live with lower battery life, increased volume and weight).

Re: When will the industry standardize on a single battery, or batteries?
 

I found an easy fix: I have a wall charger, solar charger and crank charger with all the same output 5-8 volts and a few plugs 5.5x2.5mm standard plug, Nokia old and new (as in N810) plug and a 2.2 Ah 4 AA pack which is 5 volts and can be charged by the chargers mentioned previoiusly and when no power is available can charge the N810 and a Nokia phone.
Most gadgets have 3.7 volts battery voltage (3 NiMH cells or 1 LiION) which can be charged easily by 5 V.
Some cameras (particularky SLRs) use 7.2 V (2 Li cells) which can be charged by 8 volts.
http://misc.nicejewel.com/charging-n810.jpg

Re: When will the industry standardize on a single battery, or batteries?
 

Jeez, I didn't think it would be necessary to actually say explicitly that of course I didn't want NiMH batteries to be compatible with lithium-ion! Or NiCd. In this forum it should be possible to take _something_ for just granted, OK?

Re: When will the industry standardize on a single battery, or batteries?
 

I'm guessing flexible charging technology would add too much bulk to be feasible in pocket-sized devices, but it does exist. For instance, I have two Anton/Bauer InterActive chargers, the older of which was purchased in the NiCad battery days. The other charger is slightly newer. Regardless, both chargers happily charge Anton/Bauer NiCad, NiMH, and Li-Ion batteries, and I can snap a brand new Li-Ion battery on the back of a seven year old camcorder, as all my cameras have Gold Mounts.

Re: When will the industry standardize on a single battery, or batteries?
 

OK, ok, take it easy :) The bottom line is that today's battery tech changes quick enough to make it hard to standardize, even if somebody put up a valiant effort to do it. Notebooks for example would be a far-far-far easier target for standardization (less space constraints, more standardized equipment) and still we have a million different batteries.

Re: When will the industry standardize on a single battery, or batteries?
 

If they do, they're probably not doing the batteries any service, or the batteries contain info-chips ($$$). Li-ion batteries have/require a different charging strategy. You can charge anything if you supply a slightly higher voltage, but if you don't take into account the 'preferred' charge curves and values for that particular battery type, you're lowering the capacity and life expectancy of the battery.

Compare just these two:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium...ging_procedure
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_...ttery#Charging

Re: When will the industry standardize on a single battery, or batteries?
 

Right, but as sjgadsby said, there's flexible charging systems out there. Since most newer charging systems are "smart" systems, it's not much of a stretch to incorporate a smart charging system in a device with a pre-set form factor and the smart chip programmed with all the relevant charge curves and configurations (ie voltage, duration, etc). All a battery would have to do then is simply identify itself via smart chip technology and you let the charger do the rest.

So for example, if I were to plug in a new battery, it could report to the device that it's a 3,9v 1800mah battery using charge type 9F. The charging device would then know that it needs to charge the battery in a certain way and to a certain capacity. This kind of system is already used fairly widely across the industry for cell phones, PDA's, PMP's, and other battery powered devices. So if a system like that already exists, why not further exploit it and make standards?

Re: When will the industry standardize on a single battery, or batteries?
 

Errr, yes, that's what I said (or at least was trying to say) above, too :) Such a programmable voltage/current control power electronics would however be fairly complex/expensive/bulky, so some compromises would still have to be made. As sjgadbsy said, for external chargers, it certainly is a possibility, but for current day devices that do the actual charging themselves (like our NITs and most gadgetry) that's probably just too much of an overhead.

Re: When will the industry standardize on a single battery, or batteries?
 

The charge controller is programmable. So you wouldn't need all that large a unit to do the job it needs to. It might be a tad larger because of the requirement for extra memory to store the long list of approved charge configurations, but that's about it.