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Debunking the Batteriser's Claims
An anonymous reader writes: Last week we discussed news about the "Batteriser," a small device that fits around a battery and extends its lifetime. Many of us were skeptical, particularly with the claim that it could extend battery life up to 8x. Now, David L. Jones at the EEVBlog explains exactly why the device won't be as good as its creators claim. The technology itself, he says, does actually work at extending battery life, and has existed for a long time. What this company seems to have done is just shrink it down to a more useful size. Unfortunately, their claims about when a battery stop working and how much energy is left don't really hold up. Batteroo, the company making the Batteriser, claims products stop working when a battery's voltage drops below 1.3v, but a simple test of common household gadgets finds that to be untrue. Further, the percentage of energy left in the battery after this cutoff can vary wildly. Sometimes it will be 80%, but most of the time it won't, and it's frequently 20% or lower for Alkaline batteries. Jones writes, "I'm genuinely baffled as to why Batteroo would need to resort to claims like 8 times life. This thing would still sell like hot cakes if they claimed realistic practical figures. 50% increase in your battery life? – great, countless people would still buy it at the super low price point it's at."
Considering that a standard NiCd AA cell has a voltage of 1.2V, , the notion that most devices will stop working with a voltage below 1.3V is rather obviously false.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
To be fair, there is a difference between a realistic-yet-slightly-exaggerated claim like most companies give, and Billy Mays 'as-seen-on-TV' territory...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Yes, I am. Because if people go into it expecting an 8x increase and only get a 50% increase they write terrible reviews for it everywhere and the idea spreads that it's snake oil. If they go into it expecting a 50% increase and get it, they'll be quite happy.
One shoots themselves in the foot by going too far with their claims. Often it's better to underpromise and overdeliver.
Anyway, I can think of some applications where you might get 8x, or even more. I've owned electronics which don't run on alkalines at all and require NiMH because regular alkalines suffer too much voltage drop under high peak current loads and thus you can't turn the device on at all. In such a case the battery life increase of a voltage booster could be basically "infinite", in that useful life goes from "zero" to "nonzero". I've also had electronics that work with alkalines, but just barely. In such cases you might get 8x (or 2x, or 50x... it all depends on the device).
On the other hand, if people use one of these in, say, a TV remote or flashlight, yeah, they'll be really disappointed with the 8x claim.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
He needs to sell as many of these as he can in as short a period as possible - there will be no repeat customers because it will take almost no time at all for other companies to copy this thing and undercut his price. There is not much IP here - just a slick miniaturization.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Just go with it. I'm an EE and if I tried to over-pedant everything wrong I encountered in a day I'd starve to death.
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