Tag Archives: batteries

Thoughts

My thoughts on Apple’s iPhone CPU throttling

Updated 12/29/17: Apple has posted an official response to this issue on their website. It’s the right response.

Everyone’s chiming in on this issue so I’m not going to rehash it, but I do have a practical suggestion that addresses it. You know what’s going on: older iPhones with older batteries tend to run slow (see this post). I noticed it as well and thought, like most people, that we (my wife and I) need to replace our iPhones, because they’re getting too old to handle the iOS upgrades and respective upgrades to the mobile apps we use.

As it turns out, Apple has been quietly throttling the CPU speeds of our iPhones in order to compensate for the fact that older Li-Ion batteries can’t sustain the voltages needed for those higher speeds. It was watching out for us, but without explaining it. And as it turns out in life, a lack of communication will cause problems. They only offered the explanation after people got upset — so upset that now several lawsuits have been filed against them (see this post). Only two lawsuits are mentioned in that post, but in another story I read today, the total went up to eight.

I’m not feeling sorry for Apple. They’re big boys, they have plenty of money to handle the lawsuits and their “we know better” attitude toward the customers, as well as their closed system approach to everything they develop, has always engendered a certain amount of anger from its customers. What they can and should do now is to suck it up and offer a good defense in court.

All of this could have been avoided if they’d simply done something similar to the “Low Power Mode” option that’s already offered on iPhones. That is an elegant and caring solution to a problem that users encounter every day.

ios11-iphone7-settings-battery-low-power-mode.png

Something like this, let’s call it a “Battery Lifespan Advisory”, could be a feature launched with the next incremental upgrade to iOS 11, and it might let us toggle the “Automatic CPU Throttling” on or off when the battery nears the end of its projected lifespan. We could get a message on our screens, just like when Low Battery Mode is recommended, that would take us directly to the screen where we read an explanation and get to manage this option.

And that’s about all I have to say on this.

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Reviews

PowerEx MH-C9000 WizardOne Battery Charger-Analyzer

I’ve been using this advanced battery charger-analyzer for over a year and I love it. You can read my in-depth notes about it here and also see a video where I use it.

The MH-C9000 WizardOne Battery Charger & Analyzer is suitable for the casual consumer users, enthusiast and professionals. The WizardOne is capable of charging, conditioning, analyzing, cycling, forming and discharging one to four AA or AAA batteries, all while digitally displaying the battery capacity and voltage. All four slots can be operated independently in different modes and settings. Those seeing the unit for the first time will be struck by its large LCD screen, backlit by ultra-bright white LEDs. Measuring over 3.5″ by 1.5″, the display is more than three times larger than its closest competition and shows a wealth of information that is easy to read. In addition to the standard charging, conditioning and discharging, the WizardOne charger-analyzer also offers two unusual operations modes. The “Break-In” mode allows the user to input the capacity of the battery and performs a “forming” charge designed to properly break-in new batteries. The “Cycle” mode allows user to charge and discharge batteries consecutively while storing the capacity for up to 15 cycles. There are ten selectable charging and discharging current from 0.2A to 2.0A and 0.1A to 1.0A respectively. The charger also features four independent temperature sensors using Maha’s latest temperature rise detection algorithm in addition to the usual peak temperature detection. It also armed with additional patented termination algorithms found in other Maha chargers. The unit can be operated in a “basic” and “advanced” mode. In the basic mode, the user merely needs to insert the batteries with no further key press. The charger will select the appropriate settings automatically, making it suitable for the casual users.

Buy it here: PowerEx MH-C9000 WizardOne Charger-Analyzer

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Reviews

Final tally of Energizer’s Advanced Lithium battery life

It’s been well over a year since I put the Energizer Advanced Lithium batteries in my Canon 580EX II speedlite. In February 2009, I was contacted by an ad agency working for Energizer, and invited to test out the batteries. I’ve been using them in my speedlite ever since, and they finally gave out about a week and a half ago, on June 10, 2010.

According to Lightroom, I have 1,209 photos in my library that were taken with the speedlite since February 4, 2009. That’s how long four of these Advanced Lithium batteries lasted in my speedlite! I think that’s quite impressive, both in terms of battery life (how many shots I could take) and shelf life (how long they lasted inside the speedlite).

Another thing to keep in mind is that I delete about 10-20% of my photos as I winnow. That means, theoretically, that I got about 1,330-1,451 photos with these batteries.

It’s also worth mentioning that I got 1,872 photos from my Canon 5D when I used these batteries in its vertical grip (six of them fit in there).

Given my sort of use for the speedlite, where it sits in my bag and only gets used from time to time, I think these batteries are the perfect choice for it. Those who work in the studio quite a lot, or use their speedlites out at events may find that rechargeable batteries, which have a much shorter shelf life but can be recharged hundreds or thousands of times, work best for them.

If you’d like to give the Advanced Lithium batteries a try, they’re available from Amazon.

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Reviews

Checking in with Energizer's Advanced Lithium Batteries

I can finally report on the battery life of the Energizer Advanced Lithium Batteries given to me in late January. I wrote about them on February 4th, and put them in my Canon EOS 5D’s battery grip a week or so after that. They worked until this past Saturday evening, April 25th. When I did the tally, I saw that I’d taken 1,872 photos with them. That’s not a typo. The vertical grip stayed on my 5D all the time, from the time I put the batteries inside it to the time I took them out, and that’s how many photos I got with the batteries.

While that battery life is very impressive, given the 5D’s 500-600 shot battery life with one of its single rechargeable batteries, or 1,000-1,200 shots or so with two rechargeable batteries in its vertical grip, it doesn’t tell the whole story. There are a few things I need to clear up first:

  • During these past few months, I’ve been shooting mostly landscapes. That means I didn’t take lots of photos in one sitting, which would have drained the batteries faster. I would expect that if I shot events, the battery life would have been significantly less.
  • For some reason, and I’m still not sure whether my vertical grip is to blame or the batteries, the battery life sensor kept giving a low battery notice the whole time the batteries stayed on the camera, from the time I put them in to the time I took them out. Sometimes the battery life sensor would even flash the really low battery signal, indicating the batteries only had a few shots left in them. Regardless, they kept on working until Saturday evening. Not sure whether this was because the camera expected 1.5V out of each battery, not 1.2V, or whether my battery grip, which had been sitting in a box, unused, for several months before this, is at fault, but that was my experience.
  • Related to the two bullet points above, the batteries gave out while I was shooting an event. It’s possible that they would have lasted even longer if they hadn’t been put through prolonged, continuous use. It’s also possible that if I stick them back in the camera, they might have enough life in them to let me squeeze off another several shots, but that would go against the conditions of my test, where I wanted to see how long they lasted without taking them out of the camera.

Whatever your mileage may be (and I encourage you to do your own testing), I’m very impressed with the battery life. While it was a hassle to keep the vertical grip on my camera the whole time (I prefer to shoot without it unless I’m doing events), it was an interesting experiment. I would recommend keeping a set of these batteries in your bag as a backup, just in case your regular batteries run out of juice. They have a long shelf life, and they won’t self-discharge like rechargeable batteries.

I also promised in my initial post that I would use them in my 580EX II speedlite. I’m keeping that promise. I’ve been using them in it since February, and they’re still doing fine. Again, I haven’t used the speedlite very much, because I’ve been shooting mostly nature stuff, but I did shoot a wedding recently and it worked flawlessly the whole time. I’ll let you know when those run out and I’ll tally up their shot life, too.

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Thoughts

Pitch black darkness

Last night, the power went out everywhere. Completely. I happen to be staying in a village in the province of Dobrogea, Romania at the moment, and just as I stepped out of the house to walk to my car, all the lights blinked out of existence. It was, as they say, a dark and stormy night, with nary a star in the sky, not to speak of the moon, which had probably been stuffed in thick sackcloth and kidnapped.

Do you want to know what things look like when you’re in the middle of a wide open field and everything goes pitch black? It looks something like this.

Pitch Black Darkness

It’s an eerie feeling, one that throws you for a loop, even if only for a few moments. I looked around, but there was nothing to see. I reached about me, and wasn’t sure where to reach for a wall or something to hold on to. Everything was black. Even the dogs went quiet. Then, someone in a house nearby stumbled over something and mumbled some sort of swear, then called out for a light from his wife. Others, elsewhere, called out to each other. Things came back to life, but it was still pitch black outside.

I pulled out my little spotlight, the same one I reviewed recently, and found my way to the car. I unlocked it, and the interior lights came on. I climbed in, sat down and turned on the engine. The dashboard lights came on, reassuringly. Then I realized something which sounds obvious to someone who doesn’t have to deal with a power failure, but is a downright epiphany when you’re in pitch black darkness: cars have standalone electrical systems; they do not depend on the grid for power; they make their own power. When the grid goes down, your car can still run, thanks to its battery and to the fuel that makes its alternator turn and charge that same battery. It’s an amazing system when you think about it. I don’t know what we’d do without it.

Shouldn’t homes have similar standalone electrical systems, just in case grids go down? Sure, we’ve made inroads with solar panels and wind turbines, and some homes do have batteries that charge up from the sun or the wind, but the overwhelming majority of homes in this world don’t have any sort of backup power. If the electricity goes down, they’re down as well.

We should really invest more into making each of our homes more self-sufficient. Each home ought to be able to function, at least for a period of time — say 4-8 hours — without grid power, in and of itself, from power stored in batteries or capacitors or in some other container of energy, so that people can carry on with their lives and at least have enough time to prepare for a prolonged power outage once the grid power goes out.

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