Speaking of batteries ...

[unixronin]

... The consumer electronics industry needs a better commodity-rechargeable-battery technology.  Purely aside from the issue of charge life, come on, people, is it really any surprise to anyone that many devices designed to operate on 1.5v manganese-alkaline¹ primary cells don't work well (or, sometimes, don't work at all) when you replace them with 1.2v NiCd or NiMH cells?²

[1]  Or lithium-iron, or silver oxide ... pretty much all the commodity primary-cell technologies in common use run somewhere in the 1.5v-1.6v range.

[2]  I'm seeing some references to a titanium, titanium-lithium, or titanium-NiMH rechargeable battery that's a true 1.5v primary-cell replacement.  However, I can't find any definitive technical information, just marketing claims that don't specify things like internal resistance or discharge rate.

Comments

[tww1fa]

Unfortunately, battery voltages depend on the valences of the chemicals used, and only a few chemicals are useful as battery chemicals. It's a better solution to design devices to support a wider range of input voltages and in fact that is what is being done more and more.

Probably the best battery solution that's currently available are the A123 lithium iron phosphate cells - they run pretty much at 3.0-3.3V so they could be used as replacements for two 1.5V cells, without the thermal runaway hazards of standard lithium-ion cells.