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

It seems that everywhere you go, with phones, mids, etc, everyone's got their own proprietary battery and it only works in a select number of models, and those models rarely last more than a few years before they're replaced, thus creating a real problem.

I know it took a lot of twisting of arms to get the industry to finally standardize on miniusb for the charger interface. How long before they standardize on batteries too?

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

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

[SEINFELD]What's the deal with batteries?[/SEINFELD]

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

allnameswereout: Yeah, that's a great link. I really think this whole "unique to the device" battery thing is stupid. As the author pointed out, AA was standardized in the 1950's and everyone abides by it. So why can't they do that with batteries in portable devices now? Having a selection of maybe 10 different sizes, all with standardized elements would be the preferred way to do things. But as the article author pointed out, "planned obsolescence" is at work here. They "WANT" it to fail so you'll be forced to buy the next new gadget when it comes out.

That's stupid and the car makers tried that and it totally blew up in their face. If the electronics makers don't get a clue soon, that's gonna blow up in their face as well. And I bet ya at some point someone's gonna come out with an easily changeable, standardized battery and put everyone else in a lurch.

The catch is, who's gonna be first? At the rate we're going, nobody. :(

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

The trouble is nobody wants to commit to a certain standard, and not only because of planned obsolescence. When A(A)(A) batteries came along, the size and rate of development allowed that format to settle in. Today, the device form factors are generally smaller and changing so rapidly, nobody wants to settle down and limit himself to certain form factors and battery technologies. Also, the limited life expectancy od Li-ion batteries (and the super-flexible form factor of Li-po batteries) does not favor rigid, decade-long formats.

Another problem are voltages. AA was 1.5, but today's battery technologies have a dozen 'native' form factors and voltages (how many Li-ion AA cells have you seen ?). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recharg...y_technologies

So, unfortunately, there are actually technical problems to saying 'oh, we're gonna use these 5 batteries for the next 50 years', not just big bad battery/gadget corporation attitude.

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

I don't mind different batteries. As attila77 pointed out, technology changes so fast that it doesn't make sense to choose a standard.

What I hate are different standards for USB and charging.

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

Yes, USB is a different story. I could very well envision a DC power supply standard based on it. Instead of the bricks with a hundred connectors, you could have USB style connectors in power extenders or even wall connectors. This would also be more power efficient then the 'remove charger' thing.

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

Hmm, you are right about the speed at which things are changing. That was one of my complaints 10, even 20 years ago was that battery technology was improving at a crawl, and the batteries we had in the 1980's and 1990's weren't much better than their 1950's and 1960's counterparts.

It was only after the tech boom that you really saw battery technology take off. As much as I hate the fact that we don't have a standardized form factor, the idea that battery tech is finally advancing by leaps and bounds and is now approaching the level it should have been at years ago at least makes me feel good. It sucks not having a common form factor, but I guess if we benefit from better batteries in the end, that's perfect. :)

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

I'm am totally convinced that vendors deliberately make slightly different batteries for different models, and in particular for new models. This is just to force you to buy a new phone when the old battery wears out.

I have kept buying mobile phones since 1997 and they are all in perfectly working shape, but useless, because I can't get batteries to them. I have occasionally bought a new battery (including original vendor-made batteries), but the new battery has always turned out to be about as bad as the one I was replacing, simply because the new battery is really a very old one which has been sitting on a shelf for probably as long as I was using my old battery.

So, in the end, I must buy a new phone instead. Which I just did. I liked the old phone much better, and the previous one before that one as well, but no battery, no use.

If there were some kind of general battery specification out there, used by all vendors, we would also have a better turnaround of batteries so that there would be a good chance of actually getting a fresh battery (and they could also throw in a 'best before', or 'production month/year' stamp on the batteries as well).

Obviously there's a need for more than a single lithium battery size and shape, but there are perfectly working standards for non-rechargables and we could have a limit of maybe five or six types.

I hear there's work in progress to unify the type of charger for phones (let's hope they agree on a proper connector like what Nokia has been using and not one of those crappy multi-connectors). No reason not to enforce the same with the batteries themselves.

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

The batteries used in Nokia N800 and Nokia N810 are widely used in many other Nokia phones. For example, my Nokia N810 has the same battery as my Nokia E71.

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.

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

All lithium-ion/polymer-based gadgets implement their own internal charging controller. The actual power source only needs to be a 5V regulated, clean DC source with high enough current rating. This 'charger' (which is just regulated 5V DC) should work with everything no problem.

(however Nokia and some others seem to play a few tricks here, according to a Nokia document linked to in some other posting they check the specific voltage to determine if it's a travel charger (5.2V) or a 'normal' charger (5.6V iirc). Shouldn't matter much though.)

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

Guys, we seem to have reversed the topic somewhere along the line. The problem of the OP were incompatible batteries. With the (external) charger, it's a clear story, it needs to supply a (hopefully standardized) DC voltage and a current according to pre-made profiles for battery types. The trouble is the battery. Every gadget knows how to charge/measure/use it's OWN battery, but not a higher capacity, different tech battery that might very well be available in 2-3 years (e.g. see sticking Li-ion batteries in phones designed with Ni-MH in mind).

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

I think it's being a bit optimistic to think that we could ever get something that works across battery tech changes. I for one simply wish that things would be working along same-tech devices, i.e. why are my Canon camera and my Ricoh camera using batteries that are almost, but not quite, the same (1mm size difference, triple-connectors in a slightly different place).

Lithium-ion/Lithium-polymer technology itself hasn't changed the last few years - it's the same now as it was in 2004. Any improvements in power density are small, and in any case those are the kind of improvents that should be immediately useful to old devices if there was any kind of standard: You should be able to get a larger capacity battery as a drop-in for your old one. And yes, that will work fine with the built-in, existing charger circuitry in your gadget. I replaced my 900mAh Lithium-ion battery in my Palm PDA with an 1150mAh Lithium-polymer battery and it works perfectly. You can do the same with many other devices, the problem is that battery replacements is a specialist industry. It should be standard.

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

Yeah, I want a common battery standard too for all this new stuff. But as someone pointed out, and I agree with, battery tech is in a huge tech boom, ironically enough spawned by a tech boom of a different kind. Without all the gadgets we have now, battery tech would likely still be stuck in the 1950's. As it is now, they're going through a revolution and all the evolutions and changes are making it frustrating for end users because one battery or battery tech is being quickly supplanted by another within just a few years.

And again the irony of that is we see much the same thing in the tech world, and yet we love it for the most part. IE, new toys left and right. Kinda makes you wonder though. We want a standard battery, but we love all our new shiny's. hehe. ^_^

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

Maybe it's a difference of perspective, but I've been trying to say that I don't see this tech boom as far as batteries are concerned.

After lithium-ion was introduced to cellphones and gadgets many years ago nothing has changed much. The power density has possibly increased a tiny little bit, but that's all.

This is very different from the actual gadgets that use these batteries. So, in short, there's no _technical_ reason why vendors couldn't standardize a little bit more on batteries (that is, shape, size and connectors). We'll be living with these kind of batteries for years more I'm sure. I've yet to see any new tech replacing lithium-ion/polymer batteries anytime soon.

Edit: I left out one significant change - at one point vendors changed from first generation batteries to second generation batteries. That's when the chargers switched to 5V from some earlier, lower voltage. E.g. the old, cube-formed Nokia chargers vs. the later ones.

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

While I understand that batteries invlve different technologies, but the point of standarddization can be applied to batteries using the same technology at least (like niMH, Li-Ion etc)

Its no like you have to make a standardized battery between the different technologies - but yes they can at least standardize a few sizes and connector points and charging levels etc for the same type of battery (like say for Li-Ion).
That is very much doable. But of course they DON'T WANT TO.

In fact if possible they want to lock in the battery with the chassis so you cant even replace whats inside. And they do have a justification for that too - "design constrains".

Design Constrains my foot. Its all a way to lock-in.

I mean if say Nokia can use the same battery between different devices (a Phone, a PDA, a smart phone, a high powered Camera phone - each of which naturally require different power requirements), that means the same principle can be applied between manufacturers - provided they had a STANDARD to follow.

I understand that where technology totally changes (say a fuel cell battery is introduced), that would require a totally new set of standards and cant follow the earlier standards of a Li-Ion battery in general.

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

I understand the difficulties raised by some, but I still feel like consolidation of form factors and voltage/amperage is achieveable to some extent...

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

rechargeable aa's? ;)

there is at least one netbook in the works that can run of those...

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

No, that's called "Planned Obsolescence." They've gotten drunk on the koolaid of the tech rush and the dot com boom period and don't want that to change. And while I would prefer to see device lives up in the 5+ year range with 10+ years of total support, in our currently rapid expansion of tech, that's not gonna happen.

Standardizing battery tech will certainly slow things down a bit on the tech development curve, but in the end that's a good thing. There's no way in hell you need to have 2 year life cycles with no after life support on devices just because it makes your bottom line look good to the stockholders. Companies need to slow down a bit and start stabilizing their development curves. So what if I don't get the latest, greatest toy ever 3-6 months? I'd rather have something I can depend on for several years rather than the latest gizmo or gadget.
I think it is too, which is why I suggested it.
Actually, yeah. I just saw the info on it. In fact, I'm looking for someone to review it since I've got my plate full right now. Otherwise I'd grab it myself. The whole netbook with AA batteries thing was actually interesting to me.

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

heh, would love to give it a spin myself.

i do wonder if those coin batteries may have worked for phones btw. and didnt philips make mobiles that could run of standard AA's?

btw, i just read something about lithium-sulphur...
http://www.gizmag.com/next-generatio...sulphur/11926/

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

Yeah, Phillips did. They sold like rocks. Phillip then dropped the line. Of course, it wasn't just the battery thing that killed the phone. It just sucked in general. The need for AA's kinda drove the last nail in an early casket. :( It almost makes you wonder if someone didn't challenge them to make such a phone with AA battery support, and then purposely made it suck so as to kill any future arguments about having a cell phone with AA batteries. I say that because I've seen companies do that before. They have something a lot of people cry for, but they don't want to do it for whatever reason, so they produce the worst possible product that they know won't sell, and then when it bombs, they say "See? We told you nobody wanted it, so stop your bellyaching and buy our regular stuff. You'll like it better." and that's the end of it. Product dies, company gets their way, and the customer gets screwed.