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).'"

Comments

Nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone wants to make a buck stifling competition and innovation these days.

Re:Nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone wants to make a buck stifling competition and innovation these days.

Well, I wouldn't buy a Panasonic to start with, but I don't think that's their primary motive.

I worked for some time as a camera dealer/repair shop. We would often see people come in with a damaged camera, pop out the 3rd-party battery and replace it with the Genuine one, and try to claim the Warranty.
This costs the camera makers a lot of money repairing equipment that they really shouldn't have to, since they can't tell what kind of battery was in the device.

Personally, I think a better move would be for the firmware to simply set some type of non-resettable internal flag showing that a non-approved battery was loaded, and display some type of alert option. If such a device was returned for service/refund/exchange, you could void the warranty if the flag was set.

No need to prevent the use of such batteries outright. But I can sort of sympathize with them, there are some pretty cheap batteries that are almost guaranteed to split/leak/explode. And if they can't put a stop to the warranty claims from such items, people will abuse it to no end. Simple formula- right before the warranty expires, load in a very cheap off-brand battery that you have intentionally over-stressed, and use it until it pops and ruins the camera. Voila, for the price of a battery + shipping you can have a brand new $1,000 camera.

Re:Nice.

[Khyber]

If the damage is caused by a faulty battery, you turn the device over to the battery manufacturer along with the failed battery. They pay for your replacement equipment.

Done it twice, first with a Panasonic cassette camcorder and then with a Kodak C743. Duracell paid both times for the damaged hardware.

Too bad for them

[YrWrstNtmr]

There goes Panasonic off my list for an upcoming camera buy.

I am in the market for a new camera.

[macbeth66]

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.

Re:I am in the market for a new camera.

[wherrera]

yeah, but it's apparently legal for a battery maker to clone their battery "feature":

http://www.pcworld.com/article/121327/supreme_court_rebuffs_lexmark_in_toner_cartridge_fight.html

Re:I am in the market for a new camera.

[snowraver1]

As I see it, the camera is using the (unofficial) battery to post and load the firmware, only to realize that the battery is illigal, and then either eisplays message or halts. I just find it funny that it has to use the very device that it intends to block to power the check.

2D For Life

[sexconker]

I never understood the obsession with 3D Parties or their camera batteries.

2D for life, bitches.

Lock is anticompetitive, not consumer prot'n

[debrain]

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.

Standards?

[Joseph Vigneau]

"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?

Re:Standards?

[TubeSteak]

It would be interesting to see what standards they refer to. Is that a trade secret?

Many cheap li-ion batteries do not include the protection circuits or safety features that keep li-ions from going flat or turning into bombs.

Maybe good justification

[McGregorMortis]

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.

Re:Maybe good justification

[10101001 10101001]

In related news, Sony has announced that it will be installing new firmware locking-out Sony batteries in their laptops, citing safety concerns.

Re:Well...

[wowbagger]

"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.

Re:No inherent problem

[skuzzlebutt]

Quick google shows knockoffs at under $20, and the Panasonic unit at $50 for the DMW-BCF10

Re:Grrrr.

[dgatwood]

At least in the United States, a manufacturer is not legally allowed to void a warranty for the use of third-party products unless they can show that the third party product caused the damage involved in the warranty claim... not that it can cause damage, but that it did cause damage. So no, they cannot detect the battery and invalidate the warranty. Doing so would put them in violation of Magnuson-Moss.

If I can't use common batteries, forget it

[roc97007]

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.

Re:If I can't use common batteries, forget it

[rcw-home]

This is exactly why I got a Canon SX10 last year instead of a CoolPix P80, Lumix DMC-FZ28K, Olympus SP-565UZ, or Sony DSC-H50.

Yes, Li-Ion batteries have about twice the power-to-weight ratios of NiMH, and yes they will last longer. But there's two big reasons to get equipment that uses standard AAs:

1. AAs are fungible. When hiking, I can get a flashlight and GPS receiver that take the same batteries, and if I run out of spares, I can transfer one to the other. When in town, I can quickly find a store that sells them.

2. AAs will be around in 5+ years. Li-Ion batteries die in an average of 4 years whether you use them or not. You can get them to last a little longer if you put them half-charged in the fridge. When the manufacturer stops making your model of camera, they'll stop making your model of camera battery. Now, whether or not they or anyone else keep spares sitting on the shelf for all eternity just in case you need to buy one is irrelevant - if you manage to get your hands on a "new" one, it'll be dead out of the box.

It's quite likely that I will either accidentally kill my camera in that timeframe (that's why I didn't buy a really expensive one) or that I won't care because future cameras will be even cheaper and even more wonderful. But it's not a certainty - and I'd still like something I paid a few hundred bucks for to have a chance of working 5 years after I buy it.

Re:Adds strength to the Don't Buy Panasonic moveme

[guyfawkes-11-5]

What a coincidence! Today my wallet decided to lock out Panasonic products. Oh well. Canon is better anyway.

Apple makes it difficult to replace batteries.

[Futurepower(R)]

It works for Apple.

Re:Norelco did this for years

[zapakh]

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.

not the worst camera asshattery I've seen

[jollyreaper]

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.

Re:Grrrr.

[dgatwood]

Yeah. There's even a citation for it in the Wikipedia page on M-M. It's section 2302, paragraph (c).

(c) Prohibition on conditions for written or implied warranty; waiver by Commission

No warrantor of a consumer product may condition his written or implied warranty of such product on the consumer's using, in connection with such product, any article or service (other than article or service provided without charge under the terms of the warranty) which is identified by brand, trade, or corporate name; except that the prohibition of this subsection may be waived by the Commission if--

(1) the warrantor satisfies the Commission that the warranted product will function properly only if the article or service so identified is used in connection with the warranted product, and

(2) the Commission finds that such a waiver is in the public interest.

The Commission shall identify in the Federal Register, and permit public comment on, all applications for waiver of the prohibition of this subsection, and shall publish in the Federal Register its disposition of any such application, including the reasons therefor.

Generic batteries are a must for any of my devices

[ehud42]

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.

Re:Panasonic is not worse than canon

[Bobfrankly1]

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.

Panasonic began doing this battery lockout awhile back, I remember seeing their camcorders reject third party batteries about a year or 2 back. Canon makes excellent cameras, doesn't attempt to shoot you in the leg with a battery lock-in, and their RAW format plays well with many software options (free and otherwise). If I was looking to buy a camera right now, you can bet it wouldn't be a Panasonic, regardless of how close it compares to a Canon.

Therein lies the problem

[dtmos]

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