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Panasonic Begins To Lock Out 3d-Party Camera Batteries
OhMyBattery writes "The latest firmware updated for Panasonic digital cameras contains one single improvement: it locks out the ability to use 'non-genuine Panasonic' batteries. It does so for safety reasons, it says. It seems to indicate that this is going to be the norm for all new Panasonic digital cameras. From the release: 'Panasonic Digital Still Cameras now include a technology that can identify a genuine Panasonic battery. For the protection of our customers Panasonic developed this technology after it was discovered that some aftermarket 3rd party batteries do not meet the rigid safety standards Panasonic uses.' The firmware warning is quite clear as to what it does: 'After this firmware update your Panasonic Digital Camera cannot be operated by 3rd party batteries (non genuine Panasonic batteries).'"
Everyone wants to make a buck stifling competition and innovation these days.
There goes Panasonic off my list for an upcoming camera buy.
I guess it will not be a Panasonic. If it had issued a warning after putting hte battery in, then it would be OK. This just sounds like the same crap Lexmark pulled. I still actively recommend against their printers.
I never understood the obsession with 3D Parties or their camera batteries.
2D for life, bitches.
If Panasonic was concerned about 3rd party suppliers selling unsafe batteries, it could sell licenses with strict requirements or set up a certification program to test the safety of the batteries sold by these suppliers.
Locking out competition to create an artificial tie-in between the camera and the battery is anti-competitive, in my opinion. There are ways to ensure the safety of customers without a tie-in that undermines market-based competition.
Mind you, I only read the blurb- I don't know the details of what Panasonic is proposing. But the summary seems telling.
"some aftermarket 3rd party batteries do not meet the rigid safety standards Panasonic uses."
It would be interesting to see what standards they refer to. Is that a trade secret?
A better solution would of been "This firmware update identifies the use of 3rd party batteries and alerts the user to the risk of using them. It monitors the voltage output and shuts down the camera if it determines that the battery is insufficient or possibly dangerous. And invalidates the warranty too". This would of left open the choice to the user - after all there are a great many very good 3rd party batteries and they have saved my bacon in the past.
By monitoring the voltage I mean the camera can detect an abnormally fast voltage drop against its usage that might mean a defective or damaged battery - naturally it cannot detect if the battery is about to get white hot and set fire to the camera, but hey the user was warned and the warranty invalidated. I would expect the manufacturer to check the damaged camera EEPROM and say "aha! according to our data log you used not panasonic batteries, thats no repair for you!".
By removing the element of choice they raise the natural suspicion that this decision was taken on commercial grounds, not safety and risk a consumer backlash and dissatisfaction.
The justification they offer for this is not necessarily illegitimate.
If the camera has a built-in charger, then there is a very real possibility of battery fires or explosions if a 3rd-party battery doesn't match the characteristics that the charger was designed for. If you don't believe that can happen, then I suggest you review all the stories of exploding laptop batteries. It can and does happen.
On the other hand, if there is no built-in charger (my Canon cameras don't have built-in chargers), then they are definitely first-rate ass-pirates and players of the pink oboe.
"As long as subsequent firmware updates can be applied without applying this one, I'm fine with it."
Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Any future updates will also have this (mis-)feature.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Quick google shows knockoffs at under $20, and the Panasonic unit at $50 for the DMW-BCF10
My debut novel AMITY now available: http://jeremydbrooks.c
This will cause the Don't Buy Panasonic movement to be even stronger.
My completely uninformed guess about how this happened. Panasonic executives: "How can we sink the company?" Their answer: "Get a story about us doing something abusive on Slashdot. Slashdot readers understand technology and will make sure everyone knows."
In 5...4...3...2...
Well, you get the idea. Any wagers as to how long it'll take for this to hit the legal system? I'm sure the resultant flare-up will be most entertaining. Time to invest in popcorn futures.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
I'll make the decision on whether I trust the battery manufacturer when I buy my battery thank very much. Can't even trust Sony now can we?
The "official" reason why you are not allowed to pump your own gas in Oregon
is that oregon pavement is wet and hazardous, and only trained grunt's can navigate
the treacherous pavement.
If I can't use AA or AAA batteries (or some reasonable equivalent) I'm not interested. Even my pro D-SLR has an adapter to use double As.
Just say no to crap like this. Who needs Panasonic? There are lots of choices out there.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
What a coincidence! Today my wallet decided to lock out Panasonic products. Oh well. Canon is better anyway.
It works for Apple.
Somebody needs to brush up on their history.
But probably in the legal opinion of more than one lawyer, at least in certain jurisdictions.
Ironically, IAAL.
I had no problem opening up a Norelco to solder in new NiC.
I meant "NiCd batteries."
I was about to ask to subscribe to your newsletter about network-enabled shavers.
Is the "Panasonic camera battery" market considered a market, in terms of antitrust law? If so, are they setting themselves up for antitrust action?
in the same way that Apple-compatible computers is considered a market... (i.e. not at all)?
All very true for CURRENT Panasonic cameras. The problem is that they are likely to include this firmware in future cameras with no ability to rollback to firmware without it.
Years back when the digitals were first hitting the market they were even more power-hungry than now. They could suck a set of batteries dry with just a half hour's use. Crafty owners thought they could get around this expense by using rechargeable batteries. Responsible manufacturers will anticipate problems and stick warnings on the box, on neon sheets inside the packaging, etc, when a potential fuckup could happen. The way these cameras were designed, rechargeable batteries would destroy them. I don't know how or why. All of the 1-star reviews on Amazon mentioned the recharge problem and how people had ruined cameras that Kodak would not RMA because they didn't read the manual. The only warning was on page 215 in one unbolded and otherwise unremarkable sentence.
I never bought another one of their products again. This was utter asshattery. Users would expect to be able to use rechargeable batteries, especially since other cameras on the market did not have this limitation. Certainly a warning on the box would have been helpful, or maybe one of those big neon cards that you simply cannot miss. Maybe a warning sticker taped over the battery compartment. But it's obvious that Kodak knew this would be a deal-breaker for people so they deliberately concealed this design defect.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
No, like how a Panasonic DVD burner would stifle your ability to burn non-Panasonic discs, if one did that.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
I have bought a number of music players, cameras and other electronic gadgets and my number 1 requirement is it must use standard off the shelf batteries (namely AA or AAA). This is for a number of reasons:
1) Avoid planned obsolescence - hardwired batteries (I'm looking at you Apple) mean the product will be useless by not holding a charge long before I'm done using it.
2) Emergency power - having proprietary batteries either hardwired or not means that if I run out of a charge while on a road trip or away from my charger, then I'm hooped - I have to wait up to hours for the battery to charge.
And now:
3) Stupid vendor lock in - I have better things to spend my money on than overpriced name brand accessories / supplies.
I look forward to the day when cellphones can efficiently run on 2 or 3 AAA's.
I just bought a lower end digital camera and steered away from Panasonic as soon as I realized they did not use AA or AAA batteries. Went with a Fuji S1000 - have been happy with it so far - uses the same NiMH AA batteries I have for my Olympus camera, iRiver MP3 player, and LogicTech cordless mouse.
I'm in my right mind and I have the answer to everything!
No, canon has a much bigger marketing department (which is why you see 4000 canon products in every store but almost no Pana products)
In the digital compact market Panasonic is holding its own fairly well. Although the newest models indeed have these nonsensical battery firmware updates, the FZ28 can go head to head easily with the canon SX10.. And if you don't upgrade firmware, the LX3 with the 1.1 FW is one of the best cameras in its segment. Similarly for the tz7.
Yes, canon has the brand hame, but if you have a look at DPReview, you can compare reviews to see how the cameras/brands compare.
I was about to ask to subscribe to your newsletter about network-enabled shavers.
Yes! Imagine all the time savings:
TWITTER: 7:42am - ajlitt has started shaving.
TWITTER: 7:46am - Battery Low.
TWITTER: 7:46am - ajlitt has stopped shaving.
TWITTER: 7:48am - Shaver on AC power.
TWITTER: 7:48am - Shaver on battery power.
TWITTER: 7:48am - Shaver on AC power.
TWITTER: 7:48am - ajlitt has started shaving.
TWITTER: 7:50am - ajlitt has stopped shaving.
TWITTER: 7:50am - Shaver on battery power.
TWITTER: 7:50am - Battery Low.
TWITTER: 7:51am - Shaver on AC power.
TWITTER: 10:37am - Battery at 100% charge.
TWITTER: 10:57am - Battery at 100% charge.
TWITTER: 11:17am - Battery at 100% charge.
TWITTER: 11:37am - Battery at 100% charge.
TWITTER: 11:57am - Battery at 100% charge.
TWITTER: 12:17am - Battery at 100% charge.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
That is because a) R/C aircraft batteries are frequently overcharged in home-built chargers by impatient R/C enthusiasts who just can't wait to fly their toy again, b) they are, unlike cell-phone, laptop and other consumer device bound batteries, sold "as is" with no fitness to a particular device or charger being certified because R/C models are by definition custom concoctions.
None of this applies to consumer devices such as digital cameras which come with a specific set of requirements and an associated charger. That is why UL (and in Canada CSA) can test and certify the batteries for consumer devices as safe.
There is no conspiracy involved here. Corporations do what corporations are meant to do: generate profit by any means they can get away with.
The "university" is a shill site run by a partisan party, i.e. the Cadex company, which is heavily involved in supplying super-expensive battery chargers. Cadex simply wants to sell you their crap.
If you are trying to make a point using a website, it would do you good to pick one run by an impartial, uninvolved party without an axe to grind.
Which, if true, would be the domain of UL or CSA or similar standard bodies which are in charge of consumer safety in electrical and electronic devices. Not some vendor vigilantes with dubious motives.
Why can't I turn it off?
I can decide to turn off my airbag. I can decide to turn off my antivirus suit (or I can decide not to use one altogether). I can decide to keep my alarm off when I leave the house. Why can't I decide to use inferior, crappy batteries, knowing well that I put my camera, the picture quality and maybe the life of my dog at risk?
Another thing that crossed my mind: Is a firmware update that cripples part of the system grounds for a return, even after use for a prolonged period of time? Unless the update is reversible, the camera might cease to work for me. I probably bought the camera under the impression that the feature that was removed was part of the deal, it might have been a critical deciding factor in my choice. If it is, we'll see a lot of happy customers who can toss a dated piece of electronics, get the full price returned and buy a new cam with more features. If it is not, we'll see a lot of companies that sell something, only to cripple it later when you can't back out from the sale. False advertising at a whole new level.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
My digital Olympus uses rechargeable AA cells - which was one of my requirements when selecting a camera: No Funny Batteries. NiMH 2500mAh cells run about $10 per 4, and my responsible 2-hour charger handles them all. And in a pinch I can use disposable cells with it. Why anyone would would want anything else is foolish, despite how thin it might make the camera.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
So, does this firmware protect against defective Panasonic brand batteries? You don't need to go further than a google for Panasonic battery recall to note that they ship defective batteries without short circuit and overheating protection with the best of them.
See, otherwise the 'consumer safety' angle sounds like a really lame excuse for exactly the monopolist positioning the GP suggests.
Any battery with the same specifications should work..
At the risk of incipient tar-and-feathering, let me offer a contrasting point of view.
All batteries are not alike. The length of a proper battery specification for a consumer application is enormous (several hundred pages), and usually includes a requirement along the lines of, "No change shall be made to an approved product [i.e., the battery], whether or not such change affects performance to the specifications herein, without prior express written consent of the XYZ Corporation" -- in other words, once it's working in our application don't change anything, whether or not we've thought to control that parameter in the spec. The problem is, the consumer has no way of knowing that the battery he's buying actually meets the product's battery specification -- and there are plenty of motivational reasons for the knockoff battery supplier to cut corners. Even an ethical battery manufacturer has to work very closely with the consumer product design team to understand the details of the battery specification.
I spent 25 years designing portable products for consumer applications, and I stand before this frenzied mob to say that one of the largest problems one faces when engineering these products are non-standard batteries. The consumer buys a knockoff battery, and when the product sooner or later (a) catches fire, (b) has terrible battery life, or (c) exhibits some unusual behavior, I am here to tell you that the consumer will blame the product, rather than the battery, 100% of the time, driving warranty costs through the roof. This leads to incredible feats of over-engineering in the product itself, to account for as many types of battery variation as the engineering staff can think of, and that the development program cost and time goals allow. The ability to design for a specific type of battery -- and only that type of battery -- was a luxury often discussed among the engineers with which I worked, since we knew we were adding cost, size, and weight to our designs as "defensive engineering" against the knockoffs.
I can see that you remain unconvinced, so let me give you a few examples of battery specifications, and the problems caused when they are not met.
1. Internal resistance. Batteries do not all source the same amount of current when given the same load. Take a dozen manganese-dioxide AAA batteries from a dozen battery vendors around the world. Periodically place, say, a 10-ohm resistor across their terminals, and measure the voltage across the battery terminals over time. The difference between the open-circuit battery voltage and the voltage under load is controlled by the internal resistance of the battery. A fresh, good cell from a reputable manufacturer will have an internal resistance of approximately 1 to 1.5 ohms, so the voltage under load remains high, approaching the open-circuit voltage.
A cell from a less reputable manufacturer can have an internal resistance of several dozen ohms; when this cell is placed in a product that draws, say, 100 mA from its battery (for example, when sending an audible alert, or turning on a few LEDs), the battery voltage seen by the product can drop from the nominal 1.3 V to as low as 0.3 V, usually leading to a system reset. The consumer, of course, knows only that that crappy product from XYZ Corporation doesn't work (or stopped working sooner than expected, or does funny stuff when the volume knob is set too high); there's no way for him to know the internal resistance of the battery he bought.
Note that the internal resistance of all batteries increases as the battery is discharged, so a major part of power management in portable products is addressing this issue. Frequently, especially in products with high peak-to-average current drain ratios, battery internal resistance, rather than energy exhaustion itself, is the factor that determines battery life, so how fast internal resistance changes over the life of the bat