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Nanotech Brings Battery Life Extender for Mobiles
An anonymous user writes "Using latest nanotechnology research, BatMax developed the first cellphone battery life booster that extends the mobile phone battery life and reduces charging time. BatMax is based on the IonXR, a new exclusively developed nanoceramic material, resulting from years of laboratory research. BatMax foil slows down the loss of capacity of Ni-CD, Ni-MH, Li-Ion and Li-Polymer batteries and thus provides improved battery performance. BatMax is a small (1.14 x 1.92 in) rectangular sticker which is installed on the mobile phone battery. Users just need to attach BatMax to the battery or the cellphone. They claim users will notice a battery life improvement after 5 to 10 charging cycles."
A battery Sticker? You need to wait 5 to 10 charge cycles to notice anything? somehow this sounds like snake oil to me...
Sigs are for the weak.
How on earth will applying a sticker to the plastic battery packaging do anything to the properties of the cell's discharge, recharge, memory effect and emotional intelligence? (I *might* have made that last one up)
I reckon it uses that little known electrochemical property, the "placebo effect"
Hockus-pockus, goggle-de-gook and mumbo-jumbo.
Apparently it'll do the dishes too!
I see the snake-oil purveyors are updating their vocabulary.
For the record: there is nothing you can stick on the outside of a battery to improve its performance.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Stick a sticker on a battery to extend its life ? Someone needs to get a life.
Hmmm... If enough people belive this, someone will make a living.
I don't need a signature.
When did slashdot become free advertisement for quakery and fraud? I am a material scientist and I have never heard of anything you could stick on to a battery that would extend its life. Legitimate companies would never spend research dollars commercializing a product whose effects are so small that they show up "after 5 to 10 charging cycles." At any rate, the term "nanoceramic" should tip off the savy reader. How would a piece of any material improve the internal operation of a battery? Are they claiming that this magical sticker will change the material characteristics of the battery components themselves? Give me a break!
Actually cell-phone antenna extenders are more credible than this. This is nonsense.
Improving an antenna could actually work by placing elements at the right place. Although using a random sticker on a random place which is in no way matched to the actuall antenna won't work.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
I'm sure the "anonymous user" who submitted the story is entirely unaffiliated with the which produces these rather implausible items.
it's just like getting spam, but on slashdot's frontpage instead
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
BatMax is designed to separate gullible people from their money, plain and simple. Consider the so-called "technical description" at http://www.batmax.com/technology-features.php:
"(1) The nanoceramic material is extracted from a natural stone and depending on the version, layered between 2 protective silicon foils or on 1 or 2 sides of a conductive sheet.
The magical stuff it's made of is "extracted" from "natural stone". Hey, if it's natural, it must be good, right? These guys are selling pieces of rock with adhesive.
The wavelength of the electron released from BatMax is around 3-40 microns, and is considered to be within almost the same range with the oscillation frequency of molecules inside the battery. These molecules are able to raise their oscillation energy and electricity generation by receiving electron wavelength from BatMax.
This is absolutely meaningless technobabble. "Receiving electron wavelength"? A previous poster is right, these guys have been watching too much Star Trek.
BatMax unblocks and regulates the flow of ions by generating an electro-magnetic cavity and oscillation frequency with negative ions emission. The ionization generated by BatMax has been mesured as a level reaching 30 times the value (7 - 8.000 Ions/cm3) of the ambiant air ionization (2 - 300 Ions/cm3). By the ions production, BatMax improves the electrodes oxidization.
So somehow, using the same principle as an air purifier, the BatMax magically provides "negative ions" (without any electrical contact to the battery, of course) and makes any battery work better. 100% complete hogwash.
I salute the BatMax promoters for their audacity at selling rocks as high tech accessories, and I can only pity those who shell out hard-earned money for them.
What they said...
The foil and the material are designed to: Absorb the electromagnetic waves generated from the battery.
Generate a flow of negative ions.
Interact with the battery's internal electrolyte and ions.
What they forgot to say...
THROUGH the battery's plastic case!
Oh come on give me a break... are they saying that the sticker operates on the battery's internal structure/chemistry through IMPERMEABLE PLASTIC?
Maybe if the sticker was coated in nanotech enhanced snake oil that would have worked, but with ceramic it's a tough call.
- "They misunderestimated me."
IANAP (I am not a physicist) but this sounds really strange. I mean, it's a sticker.
No, it's just bullshit. It sounds like something they try to sell old people on a "Kaffefahrt" (There is no english term for it), a free afternoon trip where goods are sold to the passengers. Magnetic anti-rheumatism devices etc.
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
How on earth can this thing even work?
From http://www.batmax.com/technology-features.php The foil and the material are designed to:
- Absorb the electromagnetic waves generated from the battery.
- Generate a flow of negative ions.
- Interact with the battery's internal electrolyte and ions.
OK, so it's outside the battery, insulated by the plastic case of the battery, yet it can still interact with the internal electrolyte and ions? Plus it generates a flow of negative ions... all by itslef?*COUGH*bullshit*COUGH!*
kai
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
Slashdotted: Shutting down your mail server for 3 days can stop most spam.
Slashdotted: LCD screens have a latency measured in 100's of milliseconds.
Slashdotted: Putting a sticker on the back of your cell-phone that uses "nano-tech" can extract more life from the batteries.
CowBoyNeal: You are an idiot.
They always have. Its just now Slashdot is so desperate for cash they're actually accepting the stories.
I don't think Slashdot is going to last much longer if this sort of thing continues.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
CowboyNeal just lost a big amount of my respect after posting that. Sure, it's slashdot, and not only stories that survive close scrutiny are posted here, but this really screams "SNAKE OIL" just as much as your average penis enlargement spam, so... did he even *read* the submission before posting (and frontpaging) it?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Fire the person who approved this story. There's a clear reason why the submitter was anonymous: this product is complete bullsh*t.
I literally paid money to see this crap on the front page. Time for the Cowboy to go back on the "don't show me these editor's stories on the front page" list. What a bloody joke.
And it does this *without making any electrical contact to the battery*! That's what the instructions say - do not cover battery contacts. Works by osmosis! Wow. The likelihood of this being anything other than yet another internet scam and about the same as Idi Amin impregnating Jessica Simpson.
I declare this the moment Slashdot officially jumped the shark. Honestly, if this story doesn't get updated, pulled, or at least shuffled off to the humor section, I'm canning CowboyNeal stories in my preferences. Pulling any more crap report/editing like this (including the increasingly annoying Engadget related blog linking shit) only means I'll eventually ditch this site completely.
They have made a great capacitor. Actually, if the stone would be very thin, or had micropores (like this one) they could indeed solve a lot of the current battery problem. Unfortunately they use it in a perfectly wrong way.
The picture of their building was obviously taken from this site.
*I wonder...If I stick one on my fuel line, will it work like the double-your-gas-mileage gasoline ion chargers?*
no, but you'll get maybe enough attention so you'll get those 10 referrees.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
How about adding Update: This is clearly a snake-oil scam, sorry for posting it.
They claim users will notice a battery life improvement after 5 to 10 charging cycles (by then the placebo effect should kick in).
Placebo effect not required. Most rechargeable batteries have a break in period before they reach their maximum capacity anyway. Anyone gullible enough to believe this crap in the first place (CowboyNeal) will have no problem believing BatMax made the battery do something it would have done anyway.
I wouldn't be surprised to see a "for best results, use BatMax with a new battery" suggestion in their manual flyer somewhere.
So, when are we going to get an apology from the editors for posting an ad for an obvious scam?
No, I kid, I kid.
Okay, this sounds suspiciously like those holographic stickers (the MPT Smogbuster Fuel Disk) that claims to improve gas mileage (for the low, low price of 299 per sticker!).
2 67 0224,00.html#121
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~33~
PT Barnum was right.
Yes, there are women on Slashdot. Deal with it.
It sounds entirely possible to a lot of other nutcases like you. Guess what, they are marketing it to you!
In other times this would be known as quackery. This is what happens if you let merketeers work unguarded by sane people.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Fellows--there's no place to actually purchase the things off of the main page. For all anyone knows this is just a joke rather than fraud.
Seriously, between crap like this and dupes is there any wonder why hardly anyone who reads Slashdot actually subscribers?
I read Slashdot every day. If there was ever any website I should pay for just to read it's probably this one. But I just can't. Other than bandwidth the group that actually runs Slashdot contributes so little to it it's almost laughable.
The code is from the dark ages (HTML 3.2? C'mon!), the search sucks, they willfully blast small websites out of existence (if only temporarily). Unless they've changed the terms they use the idiotic model of selling page views instead of monthly/yearly deals for subscriptions. Most of all, they never listen to any of the numerous suggestions that have been made to improve the site.
I can only wonder how much money Slashdot has lost since they started selling subscriptions because of this total disregard for the people that actually read and contribute to the site. If any editors actaully read this post (doubtful, Jaime is about the only one who actually reads anything here) wake up and take a look around. Decent management should have fired the lot of you a long time ago for keeping Slashdot from ever rising above the level of mediocrity.
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