Power & Batteries: April 2008 Archives

(Disclaimer: I'm sure I could have made my points here in a tenth the space... but I'm irked.)

One recurring complaint in chats I have with some of my similarly-aged friends is that it's not worth repairing a growing number of our techno-doodads, because for around the same price, we can simply get a new one that's better -- more features, faster, smaller, whatever.

(And, by extension, it's similarly not worth getting the "best" anything... because in one to two years, it'll be obsolete anyway. Case in point: the Olympus D490 'clamshell' digital camera I bought in 2001 for somewhere between $400 to $500. It still works as well as it did then. But its level of "well" is no longer state of the art. Last summer I bought a Canon A570 PowerShot that's about the same size, but has more zoom, more features, way more potential capacity -- and cost around $220.)

But what's bugged me even more over the past few months is that it's turning out to often be easier -- and close to more sensible -- to consider getting a new device than getting a new battery for it. In particular, for cell phones and flash MP3 players.

Losing Their Oomph

The rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, commonly used in notebook computers, cell phones, media players and other mobile/portable devices, have a useful lifetime of, with luck, two to three years. (Some, like iPod batteries -- I'm told -- are more in the one-year zone.) Somewhere in this time frame, the battery stops holding as much charge.

The batteries on my cell phone and media player had, within the past several months, slid into the "not enough charge" range, particularly my cell phone when using it with a wireless Bluetooth headset. Even when I'm not talking, the mere fact of having Bluetooth turned on, on the cell phone, drains the phone battery much faster.

So I started looking around for new batteries.

And this brings me to the annoying, sad, irritating, really-piss-me-off grim reality of today's techno-gadgets, even worse than "you usually can't repair them and even when you can, it's worth it because you can usually get a BETTER whatever for not much more, perhaps even less, than the cost of repairs." Namely, that the same just about holds true for getting a replacement battery.

(Assuming you can even find the right battery, of course.)

For a notebook computer, the economics aren't quite as bad -- today's notebooks cost (mostly) between six hundred to two thousand dollars, so a hundred or two hundred dollars for a new battery, in return for another year of notebook life, isn't a bad trade-off, if your notebook's got enough power and you like it.

But for consumer/portable electronics, I'm discovering, not so easy.

Old cell phones get little respect

For my Nokia cell phone, which I've had, I think, for about two years, I've NEVER been able to find a replacement battery in either the Cingular/AT&T store I got it from, nor at any store. Cingular (the original Cingular, before they were bought by AT&T) didn't even have spares when I first bought the phone.

I've looked without luck since then, in Staples and other stores, as having a charged spare is often convenient when I'm travelling. (I'll write about RECHARGE IN YOUR POCKET another time.)

From Nokia's web site, a new battery for my phone is $49. For that price -- or less -- I could get a whole free new phone from Cingular as many or more features (as long as I renew my contract). There's something wrong about this. I spent five or ten minutes looking over their choices -- I really should be trying out a Blackberry, and/or learning to text message, and all that, but I wasn't ready to be picking a new phone JUST BECAUSE I CAN'T FIND A NEW BATTERY (at a reasonable price).

(Especially since I'd want another set of wall and phone chargers, for my travel kit, driving up the total price if my current ones didn't fit the new phone -- and that would mean that Bobbi and I would no longer have charger-compatible phones.)

You-Do-It Electronics Center, a great independent electronics store a few miles away, had a third-party one for $30, according to their inventory system. But the guy at the register couldn't find it in the wall rack behind him.

Fortunately, Googling turned up a number of choices, including, astonishingly, one for $9.95 INCLUDING SHIPPING. Other choices ranged form twenty to fifty dollars, some of which were for lower-capacity batteries, to boot.

After a day of brooding, I cranked up the browser (Mozilla), and Paypalled the $9.95.

It arrived a few days later -- labelled as from Nokia, although without the holographic sticker that's on my original battery.

For the first month or so, this one has been lasting a day and a half on, with Bluetooth on. This makes me realize my original battery's capacity had degraded to probably half at least six months ago.

I think the new battery's already degrading, but whaddaya want for ten bucks. Maybe it's time to go look for a new phone. Or maybe I need to buy a name-brand battery from a name-brand supplier.

Play It Again and Again, Sam

That left the media player -- a Sandisk Sansa C1, which I'd gotten at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show from Sandisk, as their attend-our-press-conference goody. It's got a great FM tuner in it--important, as I listen to radio more than tunes, and 1GB of internal memory. (And I've added two GB more, into the micro-SD slot.)

New, the C1 originally listed for a little under $100; I've seen them on sale for $49 on J&R.com, probably as a discontinued item.)

Naturally, the battery is a size not carried by Radio Shack, drug stores, etc. (I haven't tried 1-800-Batteries or other battery specialist stores.)

The new battery "kit" from Sandisk is $20.

A new MP3/radio player of comparable storage is like $40-50.

Happily, in informing me that they didn't carry this size battery, the Radio Shack salesperson asked me how long I'd had the player, and hearing "just under a year," informed me that Sandisk was offering replacements, under warrantee, and I should call them.

I did, and after a few minutes, Sandisk support said they'd send me a replacement battery -- advising me that when this one went, I'd have to buy a new one. (Fine by me.)

(Of course, it wasn't quite that simple... three weeks later, with no new battery in sight, I called Sandisk support back up, and they said, whoops. One batteryless month later, when I called, I found they'd gotten my address wrong. A total of slightly over two months later, the new free replacement battery arrived.)

So, that's two moderately-happy battery-story endings -- and also another happy-ending (with middling middle) tech-support tale.

I'm still philosophically peeved. But at least I can be listening to the radio or complaining on the phone while peeved.

And that's why, when I went looking for a new digital camera, my first criterion was "Must use AA batteries."