To stay loyal to the Apple gods means you have to live with the non-removable batteries on your iPods and iPhones. Bringing the USB cable along with you everywhere is good if you expect to have computer access to get some charge from its USB port, but not too helpful if you are out, let’s say, on a safari. In that case, the RichardSolo Smart Backup Battery is an indispensable accessory.

Features

• Made for iPod licensed 30-pin connector
• Compatible with iPod touch and all other iPod devices except for the iPod shuffle
• Gives you up to double the battery time
• Small and lightweight for pocket, purse or briefcase
• High-quality aluminum case virtually scratch-proof
• Snaps on to iPod instantly — no bulky cable
• Begins to charge your Apple device immediately
• Battery pack includes both AC adapter [110-240V] wall charger and USB retractable charging cable
• USB retractable cable connects Smart Backup Battery directly to computer’s USB port or AC wall adapter for convenient charging
• Charge the Smart Backup Battery and iPod together [the iPod will charge first and then the backup battery — the next morning both are completely charged]
• Lithium-ion technology does not develop “memory” so you can charge often
• Smart, automatic on/off charging technology protects the battery from overcharging
• Advanced circuitry keeps battery cool to touch
• Blue, green, red LEDs indicate charging status
• 90-day warranty from RichardSolo.com

Test Results

From a fully charged RichardSolo battery, it took about 1hr 18min to finish transferring all its power to the iPhone. Not too shabby in my opinion, as its compact size allows you to plug it in and put your gadget aside. And the charge brought the iPhone from about 5% of battery life to about 60%. Not as much as advertised, but useful enough.

Conclusion

So now, I have more battery life on my iPhone than before, allowing me to watch more YouTube videos and surf the internet for longer hours. I find it particularly useful for watching videos, as we tend to forget about the battery life as our eyeballs get glued to the videos, and you may run into the problem of a flat iPhone/iPod unintentionally. With the battery, you get an emergency reservoir of power to tap into.

For sale online at US$49.95.

Nokia has announced a recall of 300 million of its batteries, which are manufactured by Matsushita between December 2005 and November 2006. This is due to over 100 overheating reports from around the world.

Fret not, HipTech readers never get cellphones exploding on them.

Affected model: Nokia BL-5C battery

This battery is used in the following Nokia handsets:

Nokia 1100, Nokia 1100c, Nokia 1101, Nokia 1108, Nokia 1110, Nokia 1112, Nokia 1255, Nokia 1315, Nokia 1600, Nokia 2112, Nokia 2118, Nokia 2255, Nokia 2272, Nokia 2275, Nokia 2300, Nokia 2300c, Nokia 2310, Nokia 2355, Nokia 2600, Nokia 2610, Nokia 2610b, Nokia 2626, Nokia 3100, Nokia 3105, Nokia 3120, Nokia 3125, Nokia 6030, Nokia 6085, Nokia 6086, Nokia 6108, Nokia 6175i, Nokia 6178i, Nokia 6230, Nokia 6230i, Nokia 6270, Nokia 6600, Nokia 6620, Nokia 6630, Nokia 6631, Nokia 6670, Nokia 6680, Nokia 6681, Nokia 6682, Nokia 6820, Nokia 6822, Nokia 7610, Nokia N70, Nokia N71, Nokia N72, Nokia N91, Nokia E50, Nokia E60

To verify if your particular unit is affected, check out Nokia’s Battery Replacement site.

Matsushita unveils that it is ready to mass-produce a new kind of lithium-ion battery that does not generate excessive heat even if it short circuits (the main culprit of exploding laptops).

The battery uses a nickel-oxide anode instead of a conventional cobalt or nickel-manganese anode to generate more power. It achieves a capacity of 2.9 ampere-hours in an 18650 cylindrical package, which is 15 percent higher than MBI’s conventional lithium-ion battery.

A heat resistance layer (HRL) that is formed on the conventional polyolefin separator enabled the use of nickel oxide as the anode, said an MBI spokesman.

The polyolefin insulator melts when the heat exceeds about 100 degrees centigrade. Thus once a short circuit occurs, the heat melts separators and the short circuit spreads. The HRL is a ceramic-based material with the ability to withstand temperatures of over 1,000 degrees centigrade, protecting the battery cell from damage, according to the spokesman.

Hopefully, this is the beginning of a new age, where exploding laptops caused by overheated batteries are a thing found only in history textbooks. But as expected, this thing will cost more than traditional lithium-ion batteries.

Yet another amazing invention by the Japanese. Susumu Suzuki, president of Tokyo-based building material maker Total System Conductor, has created a battery that gets its power from water.

The electric current from this battery is as powerful as regular alkaline batteries, yet as much as ten times cheaper to produce. The battery is even recyclable for several times.

The battery will be extremely useful in an emergency, as merely licking it will give it enough liquid to power up a small torch. Or maybe even your iPod, so you don’t get bored if you ever get stranded on an island.

Eco-friendly and cheap, what’s not to like?

A few days ago, we reported on Dell’s history-making laptop battery recall, which affected 4.1 million batteries worldwide. And as we know, Sony makes these batteries. So without doubt, the electronics giant took a very big hit from the recall. But we aren’t talking just a couple million of dollars. We are talking $430 million cold, hard cash.

Analyst Roger Kay at Endpoint Technologies has Sony’s costs pegged somewhere between $200m and $300m, while Macquarie analyst David Gibson says Sony will shell out up to $260m. Those ranges didn’t stop Reuters from claiming the $430m figure and attributing it to no one.

So if you were thinking that Dell is definitely into deep shit from the recall, think again. The company even claims that it doesn’t see a “material” financial impact from the incident. But rather, it’s the bad image that they now have, which I’m sure they are working hard on repairing this very minute.

News of exploding Dell laptops have been popping up every now and then for the past few weeks. What appear to be mere mishaps of a handful of consumers turn out to be defective batteries affecting at least 4.1 million laptops.

With today’s announcement for a major recall, it marks what is said to be “the largest safety recall in the history of the consumer electronics industry”. It is for specific models of laptop batteries that are shipped between April 2004 and July 18, 2006.

If you are holding on to a laptop battery that is shipped between these dates, do give the Dell Battery Replacement Hotline (1-866-342-0011, weekdays 6:00AM – 6:00PM, weekends 9:00AM – 6:00PM) a call. Alternatively, visit their newly launched DellBatteryProgram.com website, which contains information to check if your battery is indeed defective. Do it now before your laptop becomes as the one pictured above.

Don’t you wish your notebooks, music players and digital cameras can all be charged in a matter of seconds instead of grueling hours? The future is looking great for those of you who shouted “Yeah!”.

M.I.T researchers have revealed that they have been working on a breakthrough battery technology that could make fast-charging and long-lasting rechargeable batteries possible. But instead of developing something new, they turned to improving a technology from the past! And it turns out to be the capacitor, which was invented some 300 years ago.

The problem with capacitors is their size. The storage capacity is relative to the surface area of the capacitor’s electrodes, which makes current capacitors 25 times less capable than similarly sized current batteries.

300 years later, the M.I.T researchers of today finally solved this problem by employing nanotechnology. By covering the electrodes with nanotubes that are 30,000 times thinner than human hair, the capacitor can now store many times more energy.

“It could be recharged many, many times perhaps hundreds of thousands of times, and … it could be recharged very quickly, just in a matter of seconds rather than a matter of hours,” says Joel Schindall, a member of the M.I.T research team.

This is good news for the environmentalists as well, as this means the number of disposed batteries would be significantly reduced.

Schindall expects a prototype to be finalized in just a few months, and hopes to see the batteries on the market in less than five years.

I’m definitely looking forward to this, are you?

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are going Matrix-style. No, not the coats and shades. They’ve created a prototype nanogenerator that is supposedly capable of producing electrical current via the bending and relaxing of zinc oxide nanowires. Zinc oxide is non-toxic, which means the wires can be safely planted into our bodies to help convert our movements into meaningful electricity.

“Our bodies are good at converting chemical energy from glucose into the mechanical energy of our muscles,” Zhong Lin Wang, researcher from the institute said. “These nanogenerators can take that mechanical energy and convert it to electrical energy for powering devices inside the body.”

Will it create the possibility of OLED tattoos and Force Lightnings? What other creative/crazy ideas do you have?

Even with lithium-ion batteries being the norm for electronic gadgets these days, rechargeable Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) battery manufacturers are still going strong. Perhaps there’re still a ton of smart people who avoid such gadgets, knowing well how dirt cheap NiMH rechargeable batteries are, in comparison. And this group of people should be happy to hear that Duracell is coming out with a charger that they claim to be capable of charging up 4 x 2400mAh AA rechargeables in just 15 minutes. Couple that with a few sets of the new Duracell 2650mAh AA and 1000mAh AAA rechargeables, whoa, bye-bye battery woes!

At this time, the fastest chargers that Duracell has are the 30-minutes ones, whereas the 15-minutes charger will be available later this month. Bundled with four 2400mAh rechargeables, it is expected to go for $27.99 to $39.99. And for the high capacity batteries, they will be available in May, with prices ranging from $9.99 to $12.99.

On a side note, even if your gadgets are all powered by lithium-ion/proprietary batteries, you could still benefit from the high capacity NiMH batteries by getting the PocketPower from GEAR4.

Although proprietary rechargeable batteries have almost taken over AAA batteries in gadgets such as cameras and portable music players, good ol’ AAA batteries do have their merits. Running out of juice while you’re away from a power source is never a problem, as it’s easy to buy a set of alkaline batteries to get your gadgets up running. And also, rechargeable NiMH batteries are dirt cheap, making it possible to get far more power for your money, compared to proprietary batteries.

But what if you could have the best of both worlds? The size and weight advantage of proprietary battery gadgets, while still enjoying the convenience of AAA batteries. The PocketPower from GEAR4 makes it possible. Charge up four rechargeable AAA (included) batteries with PocketPower, and the device becomes a portable power source for any of your USB-chargeable gadgets. GEAR4 claims that a full charge can provide up to 8 hours of additional playtime for an iPod.

PocketPower is available at GEAR4 Store at £19.99 (US$35). And that’s a pretty good price, considering how much a regular AA/AAA charger costs.