NiMh AA/AAA becoming obsolete?

[MarioJP]

with ever changing proprietary batteries, you know the devices that has a battery built in. One would wonder and think are NiMh AA/AAA is seeing the last of its days??. I mean AA/AAA 1.5-1.2 is soo 90's, and proprietary lithium batteries that are built in is the wave of the future. For a start lithium beats Nickel Metal Hydride hands down in every aspect.

On other forums I have read people are slowly shifting away from ordinary batteries to proprietary ones. I don't blame them for wanting to since these types of batteries are very very low maintenance.

Take a cellphone battery for instance. You would think a 3.7V 1100mah will not beat a 1.2 2000mah AA cell in terms of run time right??. How is it that you get more miliamp mileage despite being lower capacity than you could ever dream of achieving with a higher capacity nimh AA cell??.

I am very puzzled by this. Either the cellphone is very very efficient or lithium is just too good. Whats more lithium is what a battery should be.

Non of this high maintenance of having to cycle/forming and, worrying about high self discharge. Lithium solves these problems once and for all or how I see it. I don't know correct me if I am wrong here.

 

[Chodes]

"You would think a 3.7V 1100mah will not beat a 1.2 2000mah AA cell in terms of run time right??"

Wrong. I would expect the 3.7v 1100mAh to have about 35% longer run time.
The 1.2v 2000mAh cell would be roughly equivalent to a 666mAh 3.7v cell.

Power = volts x current. So volts is just as significant as current (or capacity in mAh)

 

[MarioJP]

"You would think a 3.7V 1100mah will not beat a 1.2 2000mah AA cell in terms of run time right??"

Wrong. I would expect the 3.7v 1100mAh to have about 35% longer run time.
The 1.2v 2000mAh cell would be roughly equivalent to a 666mAh 3.7v cell.

Power = volts x current. So volts is just as significant as current (or capacity in mAh)

Is it because Lithium has a higher operating voltage despite of being 1100mah??

 

[VidPro]

like chodes said do the Watts of the whole package whatever package it is, the Volts X the Amps, then you know the total "power".

li-ion kicks but for having more watt things per weight and size, but then i wonder how many people would be Happy as heck to have 3x AA batteries running thier cell phone. that would be like having an extended battery for most phones, and the LIFETIME of the battery could be longer, and the cells can handle the heat of the small devices slightly better witout dying. and the user could just toss in more rechargables, or primaries at a whim.

to eaches thier ownes , li-ion is great, but they dont have to limit things, potentially they could even be designed to use BOTH.

 

[MarioJP]

I think one reason would be size. How would you have a sleek phone around a cylindrical AA cell? I agree that would be cool but unfortunately its all about convenience.

Closest thing is those phone mobile charger being powered by 1-2 AA batteries. It just seems these days AA/AAA is becoming less and less useful and more proprietary type batteries.

 

[VidPro]

what is going to really suck is if they have to go all with some "safe" 1/2 capacity lithium based battery, then putting 3 AAAs in even, is going to look pretty equivelent
the users of all this stuff using li-ion dont really understand it all completly, like after TIME its useless and should not be used if its not holding a charge.
and the phones themselves arent being Cool for the battery termperatures, more recalls, when some user knowlege might have solved a lot of it. (nokia has a recall on many of thier older batteries, most people dont even know about, and then they wont know WHY either still)

none of the corporations are going to say: well our improperly cooled phone heated our crappy battery, and that seem to be the problem, and after selling 16 Million devices we finnaly learned how to treat the battery in them

 

[Lynx_Arc]

AA and AAA batteries will not be obsolete soon. For cell phones and mp3 players the proprietary lithium batteries are king due to size/power ratio but for other devices needing constant battery power that is instantly changeable nimh rules. The cost of lithium batteries is greater than nimh and there is not any standard size replaceable lithium cells in electronics these days for a quick swap of power. lithium powered devices must be designed with the battery custom designed at the time and there are 10000 different sizes of batteries with infinite combinations of plugs and wiring and circuitry to them while you can take a nimh AA and swap it for another one quickly you have to be tethered to a charge cable or wait hours for a recharge for lithium powered cell phones. I have so many times had people stop a call on me because their cell phone died and they were away from a charger. You cannot cheaply buy generic replacement batteries for them at the local stores but most want outrageous prices and then the only way to charge them is with the phone itself. Only when the electronics manufacturers get together and standardize lithium batteries more will they start pushing nimh harder. nimh is still safer and I think the manufacturers realize that and I doubt you will see a charger for lithium cells using standard cells anytime soon for cell phones and ipods... that would take away from the money made selling proprietary batteries and repairing things. profit looms.

 

[MarioJP]

The issue I have with lithium is that yes it provides more watt per size but you have to really be careful and you can't treat them like if they were nimh lol.

Not to mention strict regulations when one is traveling.

That would suck if nimh chemistry is completely replaced. Even your xbox 360 controller has a lithium pack lol. Really? Its just a controller that can easily be powered by 2-3 AA

Hopefully these LSD nimh can convince these manufactures to start going to much more safer batteries.

 

[Chodes]

Is it because Lithium has a higher operating voltage despite of being 1100mah??

It's because power = volts x current as I said.

This is basic electrical theory (Ohms Law)
Ohms Law is usually taught in the first 30 minutes of introduction to electrical theory.Therefore it would be much easier for you to find an online reference to explain. (rather than me making errors in explanation, better to learn correctly) I think I have already made a mistake : power =volts x current is actually derived from ohms law I think, not actually ohms law.

Point is I don't need to be able to define the terms correctly , I know how much current a 10W 3.7V LED will draw , I know how many watts a 12V bulb drawing 10Amps is , and when I bought my 200W battery charger , I knew what the current limit would be when charging 6 LiIon cells.

All by applying ohms law (or laws derived from it).

 

[Niconical]

Even your xbox 360 controller has a lithium pack lol.

I broke open 2 xbox360 controller battery packs, just to see, and both contained 2xAA nimh, Sanyo or Sony, can't remember which.

I now power the controllers with the standard 2xAA holder, in which I use eneloops.

 

[ptolemy]

aa's are used in many other applications as well...

some camera's use aa's and are very useful, in fact, IMO more useful than lith battery

 

[jtr1962]

I don't think NiMH AA/AAA are going anywhere soon. Lithium may have an edge in energy density per gm, but not really much advantage in terms of energy density per unit volume. Look at lithium-ion AAs (i.e. 14500s) versus NiMH. The former is 3.6V and maybe 750 mAh. That's 2.7 watt-hours. The best NiMH AA is 1.2V and 2500 mAh (actual measured capacity), or 3 watt-hours. The generally more useful LSD Eneloops are about 2.4 watt-hours-not much less than a 14500.

When I buy portable electronics I avoid anything with a proprietary lithium battery pack like the plague. Besides generally costing more, you have several disadvantages. Lithium cells will generally need to be replaced within 5 years or less, regardless of number of cycles. The replacements are always costly compared to NiMH AAs or AAAs. And they may not even be available if the product is past it's "life cycle" when the battery pack dies. Basically, with a proprietary lithium pack I'm taking a big chance the item will be a paperweight within a couple of years. Unlike a lot of the rest of the general public, I try to buy for life. That means, among other things, that it must use cells I know will be available in 5 or 10 or 20 years. I don't care if this results in a slightly bulkier or less sexy product. The latter is not worth the hassle of hunting down a battery pack in a few years, or even worse replacing the device it's in altogether.

Besides that, AA/AAA has a huge installed base of existing items. Even if no new items using them were made, you're going to need to service existing items for a long time.

About the only advantage I see that a proprietary lithium-ion battery pack gives is that it basically forces the end users who would use alkaline cells instead of NiMH to recharge.

 

[moldyoldy]

with ever changing proprietary batteries, you know the devices that has a battery built in. One would wonder and think are NiMh AA/AAA is seeing the last of its days??. I mean AA/AAA 1.5-1.2 is soo 90's, and proprietary lithium batteries that are built in is the wave of the future. For a start lithium beats Nickel Metal Hydride hands down in every aspect.

On other forums I have read people are slowly shifting away from ordinary batteries to proprietary ones. I don't blame them for wanting to since these types of batteries are very very low maintenance.

Take a cellphone battery for instance. You would think a 3.7V 1100mah will not beat a 1.2 2000mah AA cell in terms of run time right??. How is it that you get more miliamp mileage despite being lower capacity than you could ever dream of achieving with a higher capacity nimh AA cell??.

I am very puzzled by this. Either the cellphone is very very efficient or lithium is just too good. Whats more lithium is what a battery should be.

Non of this high maintenance of having to cycle/forming and, worrying about high self discharge. Lithium solves these problems once and for all or how I see it. I don't know correct me if I am wrong here.

Hmmm, well, to begin with, try a search on CPF for "Lithium Supply". There will be several hits:

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=212904

and then check out the CPF links on dangerous batteries - smoke, flames, etc.

Hopefully w/o repeating very much, but there are a lot of problems with Lithium-something cells as we know them today. Lithium-something cells do not scale up well. Starting from the large size battery composed of many cells:

Toyota and Honda both stated that they would continue production of their hybrid cars with NiMH cells for the near future because of undesirable results in long-term testing of Lithium-something cells for use in hybrid cars. The head of a Toyota division responsible for the battery technology said that he did not know what battery technology would be used for hybrid cars in 20(?) years, but that it would not be any current lithium technology.

you cited a favorable experience with Lithium-something cells in flashlights and cell phones. Talk to someone who had his/her laptop go up in flames when their laptop Li-Ion battery spontaneously combusted. Talk to someone who had their Li-Ion cell phone battery short out in their pocket when they discovered that their pocket was very hot, like burning hot. for men, the pants came off in a hurry. for women, the purse was dropped hastily. Yes, such failures are less with better control of lithium-something battery production, but they still happen. In a company with some 600 cell phones, we still have 1-2 incidents a year.

The automotive manufacturers live in abject fear of what would happen if a Lithium-something battery in a hybrid car shorted out. They try their best to protect the battery with temp sensors, fuses and circuit breakers, and a protected position in the car, but the problem remains.

Attempts to change the chemistry to something less dangerous are functional, but also result in an energy capacity about 1/2 of the best Lithium-something batteries/cells.

And then there is the problem with standardization - as has already been mentioned. There is almost no standardization between manufacturers of the batteries or chargers. Even the manufacturer changes their designs over time. When your Lithium-something battery wears out, go buy a new cell phone or camera. and if you attempt to purchase a $5.99 battery on eBay from Singapore or HongKong or China for that perfectly good cell phone that you like, well, my experience has been that the battery lasts maybe a month or two....

Battery technology technology is evolving. the consumer is learning, and paying the price!

 

[VidPro]

The automotive manufacturers live in abject fear of what would happen if a Lithium-something battery in a hybrid car shorted out.

that is interesting, i remember back when the 'lectric car was being discussed long ago, the big fright was that (lead acid) battery acid would spew forth and the problems that would cause.
people would say, well what about the 15 gallons of flamable gas though.

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cach...on+engine&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&lr=lang_en
The electric car predates the internal combustion engine car, and in fact electric cars once held the land speed record. But then, just as now, electric cars had a major problem: batteries.

 

[moldyoldy]

that is interesting, i remember back when the 'lectric car was being discussed long ago, the big fright was that (lead acid) battery acid would spew forth and the problems that would cause.
people would say, well what about the 15 gallons of flamable gas though.

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cach...on+engine&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&lr=lang_en
The electric car predates the internal combustion engine car, and in fact electric cars once held the land speed record. But then, just as now, electric cars had a major problem: batteries.

Interesting article! Actually, the Stanley Steamer recorded speeds over 100 mph. There are still a few efforts on steam-driven vehicles. They have demonstrated better fuel efficiencies than gas engines and the engine takes only a minute or so to achieve normal power, but they cannot overcome the negative words of obsolescence - "steam".

As for the gasoline problem, we got used to people burning up in cars.... Remember the Ford Pinto! and society is far more litigious now than when Ford lost the lawsuits over the Pinto's gas tank.

Back to handheld power sources. I gave up on the large Li-Ion cells for flashlights such as 18650. I have only the RCR123 cell'd flashlights, and mostly single-celled flashlights. LED technology advanced far faster than the battery technology to give me useful illumination. I expect that relative rate of change to continue.

 

[MarioJP]

I have a 16 led flashlight that runs off 3 AAA batteries. It is very bright and has quite a range. Lasts long too.

 

[Russel]

I mean AA/AAA 1.5-1.2 is soo 90's...

I would say sooo 50's...

 

[moldyoldy]

I would say sooo 50's...

Hmmm, I resemble that, except I am so 40's......

 

[lolzertank]

One word: PRICE.

It had better be worth it, which for many applications it is not.

It is doubtful that a $5 toy would have Li-ions.

 

[VidPro]

It is doubtful that a $5 toy would have Li-ions.

and imagine the freak attack it would cause if some little kids toy smoldered one time, oh my we can have none of that.