So sell compatible size higher density batteries.

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.

>Actual disposable batteries

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...

> 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.

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.

Have you seen AMPShare Alliance [1]? It's a common 18-volt battery tool platform with many partners.

Mostly industrial/professional tools so far but I hope it will continue to grow. Yes, I have Bosch stuff. :)

[1]: https://www.ampshare.com/ng/en/

There is also the Cordless Alliance System[1]. The problem they are all small players except Bosch. Once two of the big players (Bosch, Makita, Milwaukee, Dewalt, etc.) start sharing batteries hen it will make a difference. Bosch don't even share batteries between their blue and green lineup.

[1]: https://www.cordless-alliance-system.com/

haha, TTI doesnt even share batteries between its own brands, and you expect manufacturers to adopt same standard? :D

https://www.protoolreviews.com/power-tool-manufacturers-who-...

> I've seen power tools from certain companies adopt the same battery type across multiple of their tools

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.

> with a bit more lawmaking

No thanks. Things like this almost always have unintended consequences.

Because the opposite doesn't have unintended consequences ? Do you know what we do with e waste ? ship them to Africa/China for """recycling"""

you could say that about literally any law. should we just not have laws then, lest there be unintended consequences?

A silly question then: why there are no AA/AAA rechargeable batteries that are Li-Ion/Li-Poly/whatever chemistry is used in smartphone batteries? Seems like a no-brainer to me: use the apparently better, more advanced, more energy-dense chemistry, but in a standard AA/AAA format. Pack whatever control electronics you need for safety too. Not only my remote controls would have half a decade of battery life, an iPhone could be powered off 2 such AAs, instead of 8-10 regular ones like other commenters here calculated.

Why isn't it done? Where's the catch?

The catch is that Li-Ion rechargeable batteries have much higher self-discharge rate than alkaline AA/AAAs, so you could not use them in remote controls anyway.

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.

> The catch is that Li-Ion rechargeable batteries have much higher self-discharge rate than alkaline AA/AAAs, so you could not use them in remote controls anyway.

How does that compare with NiMh, or whichever is the current standard chemistry for rechargeable AA/AAAs? I may be misguided here, but I generally avoid regular single-use AA/AAAs, as it feels like a complete waste of energy - even if properly disposed of, I don't imagine they get recharged by some factory and put back on the market, so all the embodied energy that went into making them is lost.

> 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.

At least some of the power banks I've disassembled in the past were just 18650s with a case, USB port and charging circuitry, so I can't blame people for buying it already pre-assembled.

NiMh is better but alkaline still lasts longer. For low drain devices like remotes where shelf life is a bigger concern than power draw, I’ve heard zinc is better still. These are often labeled “heavy duty.”

The Li chemistry produces much higher voltages and so would require step down circuitry to function as a direct replacement for AA/AAA. If you are talking about form factor, then there are a lot of similar size or smaller cells available.

I'm talking about having rechargeable AA/AAAs with higher power density, possibly using the same chemistry as in phones, laptops, drones, etc., so the industry could cut down on the amount of variation in sizes and connector types (which could possibly make the batteries somewhat cheaper thanks to less variation in manufacturing - though I suppose the price driver is still the chemistry).

What's the minimum voltage we could get without intervention? I'm not well-versed in batteries, but I do recall that a typical Li-Ion cell has 3.7V on output, which might be tricky to fit into one AA/AAA, but isn't that far from two AA/AAAs.

While there's no standard way for devices to accept multiple AA/AAAs, to a first approximation, a Li-Ion cell reformatted into a shape of two AAs with ~1-2mm "space" between them, would fit all my remotes and a third of my children's toys - so I could see a "Li-Ion double AA" working as a product, provided it could shed that 0.7V somewhere. The biggest problem would be devices accepting odd number of batteries.

They sell double-AA sized rechargeable batteries for XBox controllers. https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/accessories/batteries-chargers/pl...

This specific battery is unlikely to work for other devices because the controller has an extra connector, presumably to detect it and control charging (which happens over a USB cable). You'd at least need an XBox controller to charge it.

There are standard formats for cells in Lithium-based chemistries, but they are different sizes then the Ni-based ones because of the entirely different voltages. How (not) commonly they are used tells you something how much industry cares about avoiding many different sizes. (part of it is probably also that round cells are space-inefficient in devices that aren't tube-shaped - most common consumer use cases where the consumer handles individual cells are flashlights and vape devices, and some markets do have proprietary designs as de-facto standards)

Some manufacturers also make Li-Ion replacements for multi-AA devices, but thats then specific to manufacturer and device and the exact placement it expects.

I think the issue is that li-ion isn't that much better than NiMH as to be worth it. It's also worth noting that there are already standard sized Li-ion batteries. 18650 batteries (so called because they are 18mm diameter by 650mm long) are the most common, but there are a bunch of other standard sizes. These are commonly used in things torches (flashlights) and headlamps.

There might be some market but anecdotally, AA/AAA as a widely accepted platform, and for that matter replaceable batteries in general, seem to be a thing of past.

I do have devices where the 2xAAs are in a column configuration.

Edit: Replaced remote with devices (it's a keyboard not a remote)

Regular single-use alkaline AA batteries are more energy dense than comparable rechargeable lithium based ones (up to 3000mAh for a single AA vs 3200mAh for iPhone 14 Pro). They're also safer and have lower self-discharge.

That's 3000 mAh @1.5V vs. 3200mAh @...3.7V? That would give those alkaline AAs half of the energy density of a lithium one. And, that's single-use, which I'm not a fan of, because all the energy embodied in a heavy metal cylinder goes to waste.

The phone battery is bigger. For perspective, an 18650 battery is substantially bigger than a AA, but the best they can do is ~3500mAh. Iirc AA lithium batteries are barely more dense than alkaline or nickel, and are awkwardly high voltage so require a buck corcuit, further harming performance.

Lithium chemistry in a AA form factor, with integrated downconversion and even charging port and circuitry in each individual battery, are cheaply available on Amazon, eBay, newegg etc. Depending on how much you want to spend, they range from no-name companies lying about huge capacities, to real brands advertising (unfortunately in mWh!) genuinely useful capacities, and they are CHEAP. They handily beat Ni-mh batteries in pretty much every way; capacity, self discharge, useful voltage until they die (this actually has a downside in that device battery indicators can't tell that the batteries are running low), cycle lifetime, no annoying management like having to be careful when and how you charge your batteries etc.

High capacity rechargeable NiMH and lithium batteries are 1.2V.

You’d need a buck converter for discharging the battery, and they aren’t much better than NiMH batteries at it. So it’s cheaper to just buy Eneloops if you want AA/AAA batteries

I have some such AAA batteries. Not for the extra capacity - I'm not convinced they actually have any better capacity than the NiMH I was using before, but because they hold 1.5V for the duration of their charge, and for some reason my headphone can't cope with less than 1.5V.

There are such batteries, I saw them on Aliexpress. They are not cheap, though.

> 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.

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.

It's a choice we make, not a God given rule that we have to abid to or perish in fire

Imagine a smartphone designed to use AAA batteries. That would be something. Would be cool to see.

I’ve recently started using active noise cancellation headphones that are powered by a single AAA battery, and this significantly lightened my battery life anxiety[0]. It’s a completely different feeling when a device that’s with you every day is not “disposable” anymore and liberating to not be hostage to battery condition. It’ll probably last for as long as I maintain it, and if charge runs out at an inconvenient moment I can simply pop in a spare.

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.)

My Newton MessagePad 2100 used 4 AA batteries, the Palm m105 used 2 AAA batteries, so this used to be possible with monochrome displays.

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.)

pretty sure >10 years ago I had an array of aftermarket Li-Ion batteries for the Samsung Galaxy S2, which were able to be quickly swapped in and out when needed. there were same sized ones with slightly higher capacity than the one the phone came with, then there were double thickness ones with double the capacity that came with their own replacement battery cover. think they went up to 5000mAh. there were the usual Chinese 'gold' and 'fire' brands, but you could also pay a bit more for Japanese. they all worked and never swelled or exploded. perhaps I was just lucky. those were the days..

Years before, the typical (at the time very common at least here) Motorola MicroTac and later models:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_MicroTAC

had a battery which was the actual "back cover" (it was connected to the phone via sliding), and everyone had at least two batteries, there were all kind of slim to bulkier sizes.

Some of them (medium sized) simply contained 5 (Ni-Cd or Ni-Mh) AAA batteries.

> Would be cool to see.

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?

An iPhone 14 Pro has a 3,200mAh battery.

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.

"mAh" is a useless measurement that should be banned from marketing to the public, period. It does not actually represent the energy stored in the batteries, and it can easily mislead people. I also get annoyed that no one uses Ah, when "thousands of thousandths" is a really annoying way to communicate. 3200mAh -> 3.2Ah. Why do no manufacturers understand this? And why don't manufacturers just use a proper unit that measures the energy stored in the battery?

You must compare watt-hours (or use joules, if you like) for it to be meaningful. AAA voltage is 1.5V, lithium ion voltage is 3.7V or 4.2V or something, which means that each "mAh" is worth several times as much as one from a AAA battery.

The iPhone 14 Pro battery is about 12Wh. A single AAA battery has about 1.9Wh, according to google. So, 6 AAA batteries, optimistically, excluding other factors that could raise the count. Using your number of 800mAh*1.5V=1.2Wh, which would mean 10 AAA batteries.

The load characteristics also matter. Under certain load profiles those AAAs won't come even close to their rated capacity (no matter what misleading unit used). I also find the 1.9wh very optimistic, I guess you took the average AA capacity, in which case the battery would almost become bigger than the phone.

1.9 seems like a typo as 12/1.9 is 6.3, nowhere near 10. 800mAh seems to be a pretty available capacity and yields 1200mWh which tracks with the factor.

Though I think I’ve seen up to 1200.

1.9Wh was the number I saw on Google. 10 was just me not thinking clearly late at night. I updated my comment.

Load characteristics do complicate things as well, but I figured even the optimistic case involved enough batteries to dissuade anyone from this idea.

There are other non-rechargeable chemistries that are far more energy dense than AAA batteries, and those might be interesting to discuss.

Preach brother.

I guess it kinda worked when everything was 1.5V but even then it was pretty stupid, and it’s been a while.

And I feel like we’ve regressed somehow? Didn’t every smartphone use to advertise battery capacity in (m)Wh, like laptops? I feel like just a few years ago that was the prominent measure, and you’d get voltage and Ah as side-notes, e.g. the iPhone 12 wiki page states

> 3.83 V 10.78 Wh (2,815 mAh)

mAh is perfectly fine for a first-order comparison of two competing batteries, because those two batteries will only compete for a specific workload if they have the same voltage. If I need a phone with a large battery, and all phones are 3.8 volts (yes, I do mean 3.7-4.2) then comparing mAh is useful, (assuming background battery usage of the two devices is similar, which actually isn't often true, but that's a different issue).

> mAh is perfectly fine for a first-order comparison of two competing batteries

And yet it’s still dumb, because the actual energy density would let you make the exact same comparison anyway, and it would allow for easier comparison with other battery types or contexts.

> If I need a phone with a large battery, and all phones are 3.8 volts (yes, I do mean 3.7-4.2) then comparing mAh is useful

It’s not, there’s a >10% difference between the top and the bottom of the range.

Just give actual energy values, it’s strictly more useful.

Advertisers don’t care about useful. Many customers see mWh and mAh and think “that’s probably the same… and look! this one has thousands of em!”

Weirdly this doesn’t even hold, every battery is more than 1V so the Wh is always larger than the Ah. Makes no sense.

I think the mAh stays more or less constant no matter how fast you discharge the battery, but as current increases, the voltage drops so the total watt-hours is lower.

Hmmm that does make some sense, so a Wh value would either be approximate (off of the average / nominal battery voltage) or it would need to be a non-trivial integration over the battery’s voltage change?

It would be easier to have a new standard of Li-Ion or Li-poly batteries optimized for newer devices, with flat rectangular (stackable?) packs. They would also be suitable for the current demands of current devices. (see what I did there?)

We absolutely could.

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.

I have one. But is a nokia from the 80ies

Loved those. You could get an extended battery, nearly doubling the thickness of the phone.

> All things considered, 4 years is pretty good!

4 years would be fine if you voluntarily upgrade because a newer model improves over what you have in an appreciable way. 4 years isn't fine if the device meets your needs and the only reason you have to replace it is because of the battery wearing out.

I think we can all agree that maximizing profit is a cause, while also acknowledging that the situation is not ideal. There are many solutions to this self-imposed problem, like standardizing the battery interfaces.

I agree most company's have no incentive to do that. I think those incentives should be put in place though.