Actual disposable batteries (remember those?) have improved dramatically over the decades but you can still put a brand new AA battery loaded with the latest 2022 tech into a remote control from the 50s and expect it to work.
they have the same form factor, and they have not changed much over decades in capability and certainly not size.
Phone batteries do not do this - they are designed to fit in a certain (few) phones, and market change on phone sizes mean there is no standard size.
When phone batteries get higher density, then it's likely a readeoff between adding more other features and keeping the same battery size - and as other features change, so do battery needs. The rapid evolution of phone tech, in every aspect, makes it cheaper (and wiser) to re-eval each piece quickly, or you get beat in the market place.
Maybe in decades this will settle down, like it took for the disposable batteries to standardize over decades...
It would be nice if that wasn't the case.
I've seen power tools from certain companies adopt the same battery type across multiple of their tools, so that they are interchangeable. I can imagine something like that happening industry-wide with a bit more lawmaking, like happened with USB types.
Actually, it would be even better if we had a few common phone battery standards and every manufacturer had to use those (ideally with removable batteries). This might mean that phones would have to be built with the batteries in mind, not vice versa, which doesn't seem like a bad thing to me.
Then again, personally I wouldn't even mind if there were like 10-20 common phone form factors in the first place.
Mostly industrial/professional tools so far but I hope it will continue to grow. Yes, I have Bosch stuff. :)
That's because electric power tools are sold as a platform: you choose a brand and buy in to their platform. For example I mainly use a driver + drill so bought in to Milwaukee. Ended up buying a lot of other kit from them too.
No thanks. Things like this almost always have unintended consequences.
Why isn't it done? Where's the catch?
For powering iPhones, you can buy a few 18650 with a type-C/lightning case from AliExpress, but most people will prefer just buying a powerbank.
But the voltage remains the same: 3.7 discharged and 4.2 volts fully charged.
I really don't care if the outer dimensions of the battery are sloppy by 5 mm or if the capacity is smaller (or larger) by a few hundred or even a thousand mAh - so long as I can replace the _absolutely dead_ battery already in the device. I'll pad out the rest with styrofoam or even just squeeze some tacky clay in there to prevent it from rattling.
In case of smartphones it could work if we go through a fundamental shift: switch to e-ink or similar, reduce expectations of hardware performance, be much more efficient as app developers and have reliable ways of testing that efficiency. I’d welcome this personally, but I doubt even Apple with its marketing prowess could make it desirable for mainstream audiences after years of stressing CPU, GPU, RAM numbers and gaming capabilities.
I suspect it’s probably less of a possibility with laptops. Keeping battery designs proprietary, being free from regulatory friction, being able to charge for replacement is probably part of the incentives that got them where they are in terms of capacity and size. If we mandated using standardized easily replaceable batteries a la AA/AAA, we would have bulkier laptops that can’t last a day (let alone on any demanding task), and spares would be too bulky to carry for those who want to walk light.
[0] Stressing over battery charge and battery health of our devices. A situation where battery runs out just as we vitally need the device is enough to be in once, so we charge defensively. We also know that battery health decreases over time (the device is gradually “used up”), and we try to prolong it: we experience stress every time the battery is too low since this runs it down and every time we leave it connected for too long because constantly topping up the charge to 100% also runs it down. So we subconsciously track short-term battery charge and long-term battery health, and we are painfully aware that they deteriorate with every second—and unlike external wear, this deterioration concerns not aesthetics but device’s ability to be more than a brick. (It is probably less concerning to those who drive a fossil fuel car everywhere, those who spend most of their time home or at work, or those who feel financially and ethically OK just getting a new device whenever it seems as if the battery doesn’t hold or a new model comes out.)
But: Watt hours (Wh) are quite low for these NiMH rechargebles. I think what would be preferable would be a standardised size of phone-fitting Li-Ion batteries that manufacturers are required to use.
(I highly doubt that this will ever happen, though.)
Probably not the word I’d have used. You’d need what, 6 high-capacity AAAs to get standard battery size/life? Maybe 8? Possibly 10 with recent phones?
The Energiser rechargeable AAA I happen to have here is 800mAh.
So exactly four standard rechargeable AAAs. Not bad really.
Edit: As explained below, this is incorrect, as I didn't take voltage into account.
But we won't as manufacturers want to use batteries in shapes they want. In the case of laptops of bigger this also often ends up with there still being space despite them using a custom size.
We were pretty close to a couple of standards of Li-Ion flat battery in the mid to late 00s, at least in Europe, due to proliferation of Nokia and Sony Ericsson. Nokia especially had some batteries that they used across several models. And the voltage and current being the same, you could also use smaller batteries in some models.
The latter has been useful for the 808 PureView I have. Getting the specific battery that it used is now impossible. But it can take a very common Nokia battery with a slightly lower capacity.
