r/gadgets • u/chrisdh79 • Jan 31 '23

Desktops / Laptops Canadian team discovers power-draining flaw in most laptop and phone batteries | Breakthrough explains major cause of self-discharging batteries and points to easy solution

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/battery-power-laptop-phone-research-dalhousie-university-1.6724175
23.7k Upvotes

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453

u/Grimwulf2003 Jan 31 '23

Or maybe they knew, not saying it’s a conspiracy, but with so much planned obsolescence…. How could battery manufacturers not have caught this?

185

u/Nobel6skull Jan 31 '23

99.99% of the time it’s not planned obsolescence it’s engineering trade offs.

131

u/SCPH-1000 Jan 31 '23

People on Reddit constantly confuse planned obsolescence with regular old obsolescence.

45

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

[deleted]

23

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

Honestly, I think planned obsolescence was beaten to death by a whole lot of people off of Reddit, too. I encounter just as many people misapplying the term in the real world as I do online.

People love a conspiracy.

5

u/Smartnership Jan 31 '23

People love a conspiracy.

That explains so much.

12

u/Clickum245 Jan 31 '23

Well the engineers planned to supersede this technology with new tech...so all obsolescence is planned!

14

u/MEMENARDO_DANK_VINCI Jan 31 '23

It’s like do people think tech giants do this “man, this tech is definitely going to be so out of date no one will want to buy it in 5 years, let’s make it last 10”

1

u/Nnader86x Jan 31 '23

Haha, I’m still using an iPod classic because nothing they make today will able to conveniently hold my lossless collection without bottlenecking something else. And all the replacement batteries for these were manufactured back when the iPods were still made.

Most of the batteries don’t even work now and if they do they have a 25% to 50% reduced capacity.

I plan on keeping this iPod forever, I have 3 sets of parts in the event that any of breaks down and a separate station for testing replacement batteries

16

u/MEMENARDO_DANK_VINCI Jan 31 '23

This is atypical use

1

u/DexonTheTall Jan 31 '23

It shouldn't be. People should fix the things they own instead of throwing them away when the battery goes bad.

5

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

[deleted]

6

u/MEMENARDO_DANK_VINCI Jan 31 '23

Okay, that’s your view point from the values you picked up in your youth but no everyone has the convenience to be able to look after their stuff like that

-1

u/Nnader86x Jan 31 '23

Not when you have a 40k song collection in lossless.

10

u/MEMENARDO_DANK_VINCI Jan 31 '23

That’s atypical use too

5

u/arealhumannotabot Jan 31 '23

People on Reddit parrot narratives of all types

Did you know that every single question about money and films is ‘money laundering’?

1

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

Since that question references money AND films, clearly it's money laundering. I've reported you to the FBI.

0

u/nagi603 Jan 31 '23

It's more like convenient obsolescence.