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Dead iPod syndrome - no volt found?

Tags:
Battery,
Apple,
IPods,
NiMH

Rupert Goodwins ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 12 Jan 2004 13:50 GMT

Batteries in general are a rip-off of enormous proportions, and have been for many years. Pick up an AA battery at the supermarket: how much power is in it? Is the shop's own-brand battery better value than a Duracell? Everything else you buy is labelled by how much it contains: not so batteries.

They have their voltage printed on them, but that's not power -- power capacity is measured by how much current in milliamps the battery can deliver in an hour before going flat. So a Duracell battery could be marked as 2500 milliamps in an hour -- mAh -- while a Noname would be 1200 mAh: same voltage, different umph. One would last more than twice the other, But there's nothing on them to tell you this.

Why not? There's no reason -- rechargeable batteries have their capacity prominently displayed, and nobody is troubled by the fact. But the mass-market battery makers rely on people's lack of knowledge, and sell their wares on the back of fuzzy slogans rather than simple facts.

The problem is even worse with expensive gizmos. We have been taught to believe that when it comes to convenience -- fast charging, lightness, small size, flexible shapes -- lithium ion battery technology cannot be beaten. We have also been told that because LiIon cells are sensitive little chaps, they can't be sold like other, more mundane batteries: they have to be designed into equipment and come with special chargers. The result of these two pieces of dogma is that if you have a posh bit of kit, you'll have to buy special, customised replacement batteries at a very special price.

Yet neither is true -- or at least, not so thuddingly true that all else falls before it. Take one of the newer iPod batteries: your $50 buys 3.7 volts at 850 mAh. Is that good? Well, three AAA nickel metal hydride (NiMH) rechargeable batteries give you 3.6 volts at 800 mAh and cost around seven dollars the set. You know AAA batteries -- they're smaller than cigarettes. Could Apple's designers have shoehorned three of those into an iPod without compromising the attractive lines? Of course.

Or let's say that the first piece of dogma is right: that LiIon is so fabulous that nothing may stand before it. They need very careful handling otherwise they die, sometimes quite spectacularly -- so design chips into them that take care of all that. In a market of billions of pieces, we're talking pennies on the price. Result: batteries you can use in your iPod, your mobile phone, anything. Mass market, low price, replace them when you need to for a tenner. Simple.

But nobody in the business wants that. Apple has learned, as has Dell, HP, IBM and everyone else who makes laptops, posh portable music devices, phones, digital cameras and so on, that forcing people to make an expensive buying decision a year or two into the life of a product can only mean much more money for them. For us, it means a huge and growing pile of useless gadgets in the corner while that little transistor radio from 1968 chirps merrily away on the mantelpiece.

It doesn't have to be like this. It is a genuine scandal, and one that most certainly deserves a bigger airing. While Apple is by no means the only sinner, the industry as a whole is guilty: unlike an elderly iPod, in this case the charge sticks. Anyone for people power?