4 ms·

Imagine a smartphone designed to use AAA batteries. That would be something. Would be cool to see.

by mongol 4y ago

masklinn 4y ago
> Would be cool to see. Probably not the word I’d have used. You’d need what, 6 high-capacity AAAs to get standard battery size/life? Maybe 8? Possibly 10 with recent phones?
- Nition 4y ago
  An iPhone 14 Pro has a 3,200mAh battery. The Energiser rechargeable AAA I happen to have here is 800mAh. So exactly four standard rechargeable AAAs. Not bad really. Edit: As explained below, this is incorrect, as I didn't take voltage into account.
  - coder543 4y ago
    "mAh" is a useless measurement that should be banned from marketing to the public, period. It does not actually represent the energy stored in the batteries, and it can easily mislead people. I also get annoyed that no one uses Ah, when "thousands of thousandths" is a really annoying way to communicate. 3200mAh -> 3.2Ah. Why do no manufacturers understand this? And why don't manufacturers just use a proper unit that measures the energy stored in the battery? You must compare watt-hours (or use joules, if you like) for it to be meaningful. AAA voltage is 1.5V, lithium ion voltage is 3.7V or 4.2V or something, which means that each "mAh" is worth several times as much as one from a AAA battery. The iPhone 14 Pro battery is about 12Wh. A single AAA battery has about 1.9Wh, according to google. So, 6 AAA batteries, optimistically, excluding other factors that could raise the count. Using your number of 800mAh*1.5V=1.2Wh, which would mean 10 AAA batteries.
    - consp 4y ago
      The load characteristics also matter. Under certain load profiles those AAAs won't come even close to their rated capacity (no matter what misleading unit used). I also find the 1.9wh very optimistic, I guess you took the average AA capacity, in which case the battery would almost become bigger than the phone.
      - masklinn 4y ago
        1.9 seems like a typo as 12/1.9 is 6.3, nowhere near 10. 800mAh seems to be a pretty available capacity and yields 1200mWh which tracks with the factor. Though I think I’ve seen up to 1200.
        coder543 4y ago
        1.9Wh was the number I saw on Google. 10 was just me not thinking clearly late at night. I updated my comment.
      - coder543 4y ago
        Load characteristics do complicate things as well, but I figured even the optimistic case involved enough batteries to dissuade anyone from this idea. There are other non-rechargeable chemistries that are far more energy dense than AAA batteries, and those might be interesting to discuss.
    - masklinn 4y ago
      Preach brother. I guess it kinda worked when everything was 1.5V but even then it was pretty stupid, and it’s been a while. And I feel like we’ve regressed somehow? Didn’t every smartphone use to advertise battery capacity in (m)Wh, like laptops? I feel like just a few years ago that was the prominent measure, and you’d get voltage and Ah as side-notes, e.g. the iPhone 12 wiki page states > 3.83 V 10.78 Wh (2,815 mAh)
    - dotancohen 4y ago
      mAh is perfectly fine for a first-order comparison of two competing batteries, because those two batteries will only compete for a specific workload if they have the same voltage. If I need a phone with a large battery, and all phones are 3.8 volts (yes, I do mean 3.7-4.2) then comparing mAh is useful, (assuming background battery usage of the two devices is similar, which actually isn't often true, but that's a different issue).
      - masklinn 4y ago
        > mAh is perfectly fine for a first-order comparison of two competing batteries And yet it’s still dumb, because the actual energy density would let you make the exact same comparison anyway, and it would allow for easier comparison with other battery types or contexts. > If I need a phone with a large battery, and all phones are 3.8 volts (yes, I do mean 3.7-4.2) then comparing mAh is useful It’s not, there’s a >10% difference between the top and the bottom of the range. Just give actual energy values, it’s strictly more useful.
        dwighttk 4y ago
        Advertisers don’t care about useful. Many customers see mWh and mAh and think “that’s probably the same… and look! this one has thousands of em!”
        masklinn 4y ago
        Weirdly this doesn’t even hold, every battery is more than 1V so the Wh is always larger than the Ah. Makes no sense.
    - rjmunro 4y ago
      I think the mAh stays more or less constant no matter how fast you discharge the battery, but as current increases, the voltage drops so the total watt-hours is lower.
      - masklinn 4y ago
        Hmmm that does make some sense, so a Wh value would either be approximate (off of the average / nominal battery voltage) or it would need to be a non-trivial integration over the battery’s voltage change?
yawniek 4y ago
I have one. But is a nokia from the 80ies
- TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
  Loved those. You could get an extended battery, nearly doubling the thickness of the phone.
linmob 4y ago
My Newton MessagePad 2100 used 4 AA batteries, the Palm m105 used 2 AAA batteries, so this used to be possible with monochrome displays. But: Watt hours (Wh) are quite low for these NiMH rechargebles. I think what would be preferable would be a standardised size of phone-fitting Li-Ion batteries that manufacturers are required to use. (I highly doubt that this will ever happen, though.)
- 867-5309 4y ago
  pretty sure >10 years ago I had an array of aftermarket Li-Ion batteries for the Samsung Galaxy S2, which were able to be quickly swapped in and out when needed. there were same sized ones with slightly higher capacity than the one the phone came with, then there were double thickness ones with double the capacity that came with their own replacement battery cover. think they went up to 5000mAh. there were the usual Chinese 'gold' and 'fire' brands, but you could also pay a bit more for Japanese. they all worked and never swelled or exploded. perhaps I was just lucky. those were the days..
  - jaclaz 4y ago
    Years before, the typical (at the time very common at least here) Motorola MicroTac and later models: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_MicroTAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_MicroTAC had a battery which was the actual "back cover" (it was connected to the phone via sliding), and everyone had at least two batteries, there were all kind of slim to bulkier sizes. Some of them (medium sized) simply contained 5 (Ni-Cd or Ni-Mh) AAA batteries.
strogonoff 4y ago
I’ve recently started using active noise cancellation headphones that are powered by a single AAA battery, and this significantly lightened my battery life anxiety[0]. It’s a completely different feeling when a device that’s with you every day is not “disposable” anymore and liberating to not be hostage to battery condition. It’ll probably last for as long as I maintain it, and if charge runs out at an inconvenient moment I can simply pop in a spare. In case of smartphones it could work if we go through a fundamental shift: switch to e-ink or similar, reduce expectations of hardware performance, be much more efficient as app developers and have reliable ways of testing that efficiency. I’d welcome this personally, but I doubt even Apple with its marketing prowess could make it desirable for mainstream audiences after years of stressing CPU, GPU, RAM numbers and gaming capabilities. I suspect it’s probably less of a possibility with laptops. Keeping battery designs proprietary, being free from regulatory friction, being able to charge for replacement is probably part of the incentives that got them where they are in terms of capacity and size. If we mandated using standardized easily replaceable batteries a la AA/AAA, we would have bulkier laptops that can’t last a day (let alone on any demanding task), and spares would be too bulky to carry for those who want to walk light. [0] Stressing over battery charge and battery health of our devices. A situation where battery runs out just as we vitally need the device is enough to be in once, so we charge defensively. We also know that battery health decreases over time (the device is gradually “used up”), and we try to prolong it: we experience stress every time the battery is too low since this runs it down and every time we leave it connected for too long because constantly topping up the charge to 100% also runs it down. So we subconsciously track short-term battery charge and long-term battery health, and we are painfully aware that they deteriorate with every second—and unlike external wear, this deterioration concerns not aesthetics but device’s ability to be more than a brick. (It is probably less concerning to those who drive a fossil fuel car everywhere, those who spend most of their time home or at work, or those who feel financially and ethically OK just getting a new device whenever it seems as if the battery doesn’t hold or a new model comes out.)
llampx 4y ago
It would be easier to have a new standard of Li-Ion or Li-poly batteries optimized for newer devices, with flat rectangular (stackable?) packs. They would also be suitable for the current demands of current devices. (see what I did there?)
- Tams80 4y ago
  We absolutely could. But we won't as manufacturers want to use batteries in shapes they want. In the case of laptops of bigger this also often ends up with there still being space despite them using a custom size. We were pretty close to a couple of standards of Li-Ion flat battery in the mid to late 00s, at least in Europe, due to proliferation of Nokia and Sony Ericsson. Nokia especially had some batteries that they used across several models. And the voltage and current being the same, you could also use smaller batteries in some models. The latter has been useful for the 808 PureView I have. Getting the specific battery that it used is now impossible. But it can take a very common Nokia battery with a slightly lower capacity.

Imagine a smartphone designed to use AAA batteries. That would be something. Would be cool to see.

by mongol 4y ago

Imagine a smartphone designed to use AAA batteries. That would be something. Would be cool to see.

> Would be cool to see. Probably not the word I’d have used. You’d need what, 6 high-capacity AAAs to get standard battery size/life? Maybe 8? Possibly 10 with recent phones?

Nition 4y ago
An iPhone 14 Pro has a 3,200mAh battery. The Energiser rechargeable AAA I happen to have here is 800mAh. So exactly four standard rechargeable AAAs. Not bad really. Edit: As explained below, this is incorrect, as I didn't take voltage into account.
- coder543 4y ago
  "mAh" is a useless measurement that should be banned from marketing to the public, period. It does not actually represent the energy stored in the batteries, and it can easily mislead people. I also get annoyed that no one uses Ah, when "thousands of thousandths" is a really annoying way to communicate. 3200mAh -> 3.2Ah. Why do no manufacturers understand this? And why don't manufacturers just use a proper unit that measures the energy stored in the battery? You must compare watt-hours (or use joules, if you like) for it to be meaningful. AAA voltage is 1.5V, lithium ion voltage is 3.7V or 4.2V or something, which means that each "mAh" is worth several times as much as one from a AAA battery. The iPhone 14 Pro battery is about 12Wh. A single AAA battery has about 1.9Wh, according to google. So, 6 AAA batteries, optimistically, excluding other factors that could raise the count. Using your number of 800mAh*1.5V=1.2Wh, which would mean 10 AAA batteries.
  - consp 4y ago
    The load characteristics also matter. Under certain load profiles those AAAs won't come even close to their rated capacity (no matter what misleading unit used). I also find the 1.9wh very optimistic, I guess you took the average AA capacity, in which case the battery would almost become bigger than the phone.
    - masklinn 4y ago
      1.9 seems like a typo as 12/1.9 is 6.3, nowhere near 10. 800mAh seems to be a pretty available capacity and yields 1200mWh which tracks with the factor. Though I think I’ve seen up to 1200.
      - coder543 4y ago
        1.9Wh was the number I saw on Google. 10 was just me not thinking clearly late at night. I updated my comment.
    - coder543 4y ago
      Load characteristics do complicate things as well, but I figured even the optimistic case involved enough batteries to dissuade anyone from this idea. There are other non-rechargeable chemistries that are far more energy dense than AAA batteries, and those might be interesting to discuss.
  - masklinn 4y ago
    Preach brother. I guess it kinda worked when everything was 1.5V but even then it was pretty stupid, and it’s been a while. And I feel like we’ve regressed somehow? Didn’t every smartphone use to advertise battery capacity in (m)Wh, like laptops? I feel like just a few years ago that was the prominent measure, and you’d get voltage and Ah as side-notes, e.g. the iPhone 12 wiki page states > 3.83 V 10.78 Wh (2,815 mAh)
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    mAh is perfectly fine for a first-order comparison of two competing batteries, because those two batteries will only compete for a specific workload if they have the same voltage. If I need a phone with a large battery, and all phones are 3.8 volts (yes, I do mean 3.7-4.2) then comparing mAh is useful, (assuming background battery usage of the two devices is similar, which actually isn't often true, but that's a different issue).
    - masklinn 4y ago
      > mAh is perfectly fine for a first-order comparison of two competing batteries And yet it’s still dumb, because the actual energy density would let you make the exact same comparison anyway, and it would allow for easier comparison with other battery types or contexts. > If I need a phone with a large battery, and all phones are 3.8 volts (yes, I do mean 3.7-4.2) then comparing mAh is useful It’s not, there’s a >10% difference between the top and the bottom of the range. Just give actual energy values, it’s strictly more useful.
      - dwighttk 4y ago
        Advertisers don’t care about useful. Many customers see mWh and mAh and think “that’s probably the same… and look! this one has thousands of em!”
        masklinn 4y ago
        Weirdly this doesn’t even hold, every battery is more than 1V so the Wh is always larger than the Ah. Makes no sense.
  - rjmunro 4y ago
    I think the mAh stays more or less constant no matter how fast you discharge the battery, but as current increases, the voltage drops so the total watt-hours is lower.
    - masklinn 4y ago
      Hmmm that does make some sense, so a Wh value would either be approximate (off of the average / nominal battery voltage) or it would need to be a non-trivial integration over the battery’s voltage change?

yawniek 4y ago

I have one. But is a nokia from the 80ies

TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
Loved those. You could get an extended battery, nearly doubling the thickness of the phone.

linmob 4y ago

My Newton MessagePad 2100 used 4 AA batteries, the Palm m105 used 2 AAA batteries, so this used to be possible with monochrome displays. But: Watt hours (Wh) are quite low for these NiMH rechargebles. I think what would be preferable would be a standardised size of phone-fitting Li-Ion batteries that manufacturers are required to use. (I highly doubt that this will ever happen, though.)

867-5309 4y ago
pretty sure >10 years ago I had an array of aftermarket Li-Ion batteries for the Samsung Galaxy S2, which were able to be quickly swapped in and out when needed. there were same sized ones with slightly higher capacity than the one the phone came with, then there were double thickness ones with double the capacity that came with their own replacement battery cover. think they went up to 5000mAh. there were the usual Chinese 'gold' and 'fire' brands, but you could also pay a bit more for Japanese. they all worked and never swelled or exploded. perhaps I was just lucky. those were the days..
- jaclaz 4y ago
  Years before, the typical (at the time very common at least here) Motorola MicroTac and later models: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_MicroTAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_MicroTAC had a battery which was the actual "back cover" (it was connected to the phone via sliding), and everyone had at least two batteries, there were all kind of slim to bulkier sizes. Some of them (medium sized) simply contained 5 (Ni-Cd or Ni-Mh) AAA batteries.

strogonoff 4y ago

I’ve recently started using active noise cancellation headphones that are powered by a single AAA battery, and this significantly lightened my battery life anxiety[0]. It’s a completely different feeling when a device that’s with you every day is not “disposable” anymore and liberating to not be hostage to battery condition. It’ll probably last for as long as I maintain it, and if charge runs out at an inconvenient moment I can simply pop in a spare. In case of smartphones it could work if we go through a fundamental shift: switch to e-ink or similar, reduce expectations of hardware performance, be much more efficient as app developers and have reliable ways of testing that efficiency. I’d welcome this personally, but I doubt even Apple with its marketing prowess could make it desirable for mainstream audiences after years of stressing CPU, GPU, RAM numbers and gaming capabilities. I suspect it’s probably less of a possibility with laptops. Keeping battery designs proprietary, being free from regulatory friction, being able to charge for replacement is probably part of the incentives that got them where they are in terms of capacity and size. If we mandated using standardized easily replaceable batteries a la AA/AAA, we would have bulkier laptops that can’t last a day (let alone on any demanding task), and spares would be too bulky to carry for those who want to walk light. [0] Stressing over battery charge and battery health of our devices. A situation where battery runs out just as we vitally need the device is enough to be in once, so we charge defensively. We also know that battery health decreases over time (the device is gradually “used up”), and we try to prolong it: we experience stress every time the battery is too low since this runs it down and every time we leave it connected for too long because constantly topping up the charge to 100% also runs it down. So we subconsciously track short-term battery charge and long-term battery health, and we are painfully aware that they deteriorate with every second—and unlike external wear, this deterioration concerns not aesthetics but device’s ability to be more than a brick. (It is probably less concerning to those who drive a fossil fuel car everywhere, those who spend most of their time home or at work, or those who feel financially and ethically OK just getting a new device whenever it seems as if the battery doesn’t hold or a new model comes out.)

llampx 4y ago

It would be easier to have a new standard of Li-Ion or Li-poly batteries optimized for newer devices, with flat rectangular (stackable?) packs. They would also be suitable for the current demands of current devices. (see what I did there?)

Tams80 4y ago
We absolutely could. But we won't as manufacturers want to use batteries in shapes they want. In the case of laptops of bigger this also often ends up with there still being space despite them using a custom size. We were pretty close to a couple of standards of Li-Ion flat battery in the mid to late 00s, at least in Europe, due to proliferation of Nokia and Sony Ericsson. Nokia especially had some batteries that they used across several models. And the voltage and current being the same, you could also use smaller batteries in some models. The latter has been useful for the 808 PureView I have. Getting the specific battery that it used is now impossible. But it can take a very common Nokia battery with a slightly lower capacity.