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Batterylife Activator Reviewed
Daniel Rutter writes "Slashdot chewed over the BatMax Battery Life Booster - a nanotechnomagical sticker that's meant to rejuvenate lithium ion batteries - a while ago. Now I've reviewed the strikingly similar Batterylife Activator, and subjected it to actual empirical testing, with automated datalogging and everything. The results confirmed my original suspicion -- that the local Batterylife branch made a serious error of judgement when they decided to send me their product."
Actual tests of batteries always show that the cheapest batteries are the best value for money, in terms of watt hours per dollar.
Oh well, what the hell...
I hadn't noticed, until your post made me go back to look, that it was Dan's Data - the source of one of the best reviews I've ever read...
...of a kitten. Even compares it against a puppy, a baby, and a new video card - kitten wins, of course ;)
http://www.dansdata.com/kitten.htm
PigPog.
http://www.bit-tech.net/review/395
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the Activator doesn't work, how come so many people say that it does?
It's very simple, really. Placebo effect and confirmation bias. These things drive all manner of quackery (naturopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture, etc.) and other pseudoscience. Confirmation bias is particularly powerful here as people don't want to admit they're stupid enough to have been duped into buying an overpriced sticker, even though they are.
Except that, if he used two batteries, then he can't compare the results of the batteries to each other. Using two different batteries, you are introducing a much larger amount of experimental error than serial tests of the same battery. Can you guarantee that the internal chemistries of two old batteries will cause them to perform in *exactly* the same manner? The differences he saw in the runs were very small, less than a standard deviation (at least it looks like it to me, I wish he'd done some statistical analysis).
As I said in another comment, he didn't even hold the charge times constant. His test was completely useless. This review doesn't help show the sticker is useless.
>Would you care to explain which of those causes the Casimir effect?
Electromagnetic. Fewer wavelengths of em radiation can exist between two closely aligned surfaces than exist outside them, leading to an inward pressure.
You misunderstand how LiI batteries work. As you say, I did a run with the battery after it'd been sitting uncharged in my camera bag for N weeks, then I gave it an overnight charge before testing again, then I charged it again right after that run - which presumably accounted for its not-so-good third-run result.
I gave the battery a decent chance to recover from its 10 cycles before doing the final, "Activatored", test, which is (again presumably) why it did reasonably well - in fact, just as well as you'd expect if the sticker were just, um, a sticker.
The important point here is that overnight charging of a LiI battery should be no better than shorter "full" charging, because LiI chargers pump lots of current into the battery in constant current mode over a relatively short time, then tail off in constant voltage mode, then sit and do nothing - no trickle charge. It's plausible that a LiI charger will report a full charge before the constant voltage mode is quite complete, but that mode will _not_ take more than an hour or two. Any further benefit is solely due to giving the battery time to rest and cool down.
There is no mystery about the Casimir effect. It was predicted on the basis of electromagnetic theory and experimental results confirm it. Google will give you plenty of pages explaining it.
Lithium Ion batteries do not receive a trickle charge after the regular charge cycle is complete like NiCd or NiMH do.
Once the cycle is completed, the battery is disconnected from all further inputs and no further charging takes place (unless the battery self-discharges over a period of weeks to below the recharge threshold, at which point the regular charging cycle will begin again).
After the "charging" light goes out, there's no difference between leaving the battery in the charger vs removing the battery and leaving it sit on your desk for an equal amount of time.
Also, in response to another comment, discharging LiIon at too high a rate will cause catastrophic cell failure, likely resulting in the battery very quickly reaching ~600 degrees and, you know, bursting into flames. The acceptable discharge rates are listed in C units and therefore do correlate directly to the mAh rating of the cells.
As explained in the article (you did read it, right?), there are serious variations in mobile phone power consumption, even on a phone that's sitting in one spot. They may average out. They may not.
Power consumption into an identical load is a constant. Li-Ion charge and discharge curves are known quantities that Dan explains fairly well. Yes, you'll see variation based on time in "trickle" mode and "rest" time between charges, but that'll be of the order of 1%. This product claims to extend a Li-Ion battery's life by ~40%. His data don't show that.
I'll grant he didn't use the device for it's "intended purpose", but since it's the same technology as the stated purpose and the manufacturer's claims indicate it should work on any Li-Ion battery, don't defend sloppy marketing practices simply because you have a preconceived notion of what the experimenter's beliefs are.