Cordless phones

[MiamiCuse]

Can someone recommend a cordless phone that has long lasting batteries that will not "degrade" a lot over time?

I have two cordless phones, and when they were new, the batteries last 3 to

4 days, then after a few months or so of usages and charging/recharging, they no longer hold charge as long, and it gets worse and worse until the charge will hold for only about 15 minutes.

I understand those batteries have memory and you have to let it die before you recharge and if you leave it on the charger too long it could also ruin it. However, I simply cannot manage to do that, I have two cordless phones and I don't want them to die in the middle of a call, so I do charge them before they run out, also I don't remove them from the charger as soon as they are done, I sometimes leave them on the charger too long.

I have purchased new replacement batteries and they work for a few months and then back to not holding charge again.

Are there cordless phones out there that will hold charges? I am ready to toss my two phones into the garbage!

MC

[Art]

Just look for a phone that does NOT use nicad batteries. Those are the ones with memory problems.

[Smarty]

My Panasonic cordless phones use Nickel-Hydride batteries with no memory issues......

[ransley]

Consumer Reports probably rates battery life

[Evan Platt]

Any batteries, short of sealed lead acid, will start to hold less of a charge over time. How old are the phones? The newer the technology, the better they'll be at holding a charge, but still after a year or so, it may be time to buy new batteries.

[AZ Nomad]

No phone weighing less than 15 pounds uses a lead acid battery. About the last phone to use a lead acid battery were bagphones of the early 80's.

Cordless phones used to use NiCads but now use NIMH batteries or Lithium Ion.

The usuall failure occurs as a result of running the battery after one of the individual cells has completely discharged. The other cells will force current through the discharged cell therby charging it in reverse and shorting it out.

[Chris Hill]

My uniden system holds a charge for several days. I have several handsets, so I just charge the one that is dying and grab another when when I need to. I've had the same batteries in them for years. I generally have to buy a new battery for one about every two or three years.

[AZ Nomad]

Piggybacking

memory effect is mostly a myth. Best strategy is to ignore the concept. Letting the batterys run all the way down is far far more harmfull.

no it won't. Unless the phone is defective and allowing the batteries to overheat.

I typically get 4-5 years out of set. I haven't seen any serious reduction in battery life. They last at least 2 days at which point I've returned the phone to the charger, before the battery is discharged.

Try leaving the phone in the charger overnight every night. I guarantee you'll get better battery life than your current strategy.

[Kurt Ullman]

This the same with laptop batteries? I use my laptop more as a desktop, so it is almost always plugged in. A couple times a month, I may run it on batteries for awhile mostly to make sure the batteries are working should I need them. But I don't really need to run them down to nothing? Is there maybe some minimum I should run them down or is just a few minutes off house power to confirm they are working is okay>

[AZ Nomad]

I don't think so. Laptop's use lithium ion batteries and generally have fairly high quality charge controllers and shut down before the cells get fully discharged.

Cheap cordless phones with NIMH batteries are a totally different story. They don't shutdown before the batter is fully discharged.

For laptops, I don't like losing power in the middle of a session. I typically set my laptop to 'hibernate' (save to disk and power off) when power gets below 15% or so. I also set them to hibernate if I close the lid when runing on battery power.

[Kurt Ullman]

So, running down the laptops won't hurt, but doing on a structured basis as a maintenance function isn't needed?

[mm]

If you spend a lot of time talking on the cordless phone, this might not be true, but otherwise, if you can get an old phone with an on/off switch, you'll be better off.

On current phones the switch goes from standby to on, but the phone is always in receive mode, running down the battery.

On old phones, when the switch was Off, the phone was off. No current was used from the battery. It wouldn't ring, but you can still hear one of the wired phones ringing, pick up the phone and turn it on to talk.

Getting rid of the on-off switch strikes me as stupid. If new phones use so much less battery power that they stay charged for 5 days without the on-off switch, instead of one day some time ago, the new phones would stay charged for 20 with an on/off switch.

[mm]

How do you know this when the phone manufacturers say otherwise?

No. They use Li-ion batteries, the ones famous for bursting into flames (on rare occasions), and they don't have that trait. Why they don't make cordless phones that use the same kind of batteries, I don't know.

I see nickle-hydride batteries, a third type that someone recommended, for sale for some cordless phones, but I don't know much about their traits.

[AZ Nomad]

Running all the way down can severly hurt your file system if write operations were in progress at the point of powerloss.

I don't know what you mean by "doing on a structured basis....". Are you talking about precautions against the so called 'memory effect'? Doesn't apply to Lithium Ion batteries. Maybe applied to early NiCads although the jury is still out and it may simply be a myth.

A different effect is that Lithium Ion batteries have a limited number of charge/discharge cycles. If you run on batteries and then reconect the charger

20 times a week instead of 4 times a week, you'll get 1/5th the battery life. Leave it on the charger, or let it run most of the way down.

[Kurt Ullman]

That is what I meant. So, don't need to run the batteries on my laptop down every month to avoid having them memory and only hold partial charges?

So, I should leave it on the charger except for maybe 10 minutes or so when I know I am going to have to use the batteries to test to make sure they are working properly.

[AZ Nomad]

Pretty much. Leave it on the charger except when you want portability. I prefer running on batteries as the power management usually has the laptop run cooler even though I have cpu throttling set for both AC and batteries.

[Brent Bolin]

Like someone else in this thread mentioned Uniden (http://

. I've had nothing but good luck with them. Planning on purchasing a new set of four. Separate chargers on all of them, running from the same base unit.

Previously had Panasonic and General Electric. Both died an early death.

[jmeehan]

=2E..

That is about the same for me. I believe most cordless phones (Not cell phones) are designed to be in the charger most of the time when they are not in use. The choice of batteries will reflect that. Leaving them out of the charger for days at a time is not within the normal expected use, so you get less battery life.

[CL "dnoyeB" Gilbert]

Those batteries probably only need reconditioning and are not dead. Too bad they dont make the plain old AA batteries. Likely because they want you to keep buying from the... Plenty of reconditioning devices for AA and AAA batteries, I dont know any for phone batteries though.

Most newer phones should not have too much of a problem. Anyway, why are you trying to get batteries to last 4 days? Is there no charger around? I would change my brand of phone. My panasonic I have had for about 5 years and the batteries will last at least 4 hours. i dont talk that much though.

[Claude Hopper]

I had nicad batteries in my cordless phone that lasted for many years. I leave them on the charger all the time. One cordless phone I put away for a few years while I had cell only. Took it out of storage, plugged it in and back in business again, batteries at least 7 years old. It's back in storage again, I'm back to cell only again. I can no longer have a phone that I can't take with me everywhere I go.