Batterylife Activator Reviewed 213
Daniel Rutter writes "Slashdot chewed over the BatMax Battery Life Booster - a nanotechnomagical sticker that's meant to rejuvenate lithium ion batteries - a while ago. Now I've reviewed the strikingly similar Batterylife Activator, and subjected it to actual empirical testing, with automated datalogging and everything. The results confirmed my original suspicion -- that the local Batterylife branch made a serious error of judgement when they decided to send me their product."
Well, at least this time... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Serious error in judgment"? (Score:0, Interesting)
There are four different kinds of force that we know of in the world: gravity, electromagnetic, strong, and weak. Obviously, this device is not working by means of gravity, strong or weak force, so the only question is, is it working by means of the electromagnetic force? A quick look at it and a little bit of thought about how that could possibly work shows that no, it isn't working by the electromagnetic force. So therefore either it is working by some unknown force (a fifth force) or it doesn't work. It shouldn't take anyone very much time to answer a question like that.
Li-ion hype? (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess in the age of high tech toys where batteries are the real limitations, every body's trying to get a one up on the battery front. I mean, can you have a super PDA that acts as a cell phone, GPS, mp3 player, movie player, connects to the internet etc etc? Sure, they can make it but the battery that powers it will only last for about 5 minutes.
There's a big market for batteries and anything that can make them better but pretty much, I think their maxed out technology wise. Fuel cells are the next big hope for tech toys.
Re:Hehe (Score:1, Interesting)
Ionizing energy creates sound waves with particle-stripping Gauss fields! It sounds cool, so it must work.
how could they be wrong? (Score:5, Interesting)
Checking on bogus claims (Score:4, Interesting)
I wrote to the FAA district office that covers Waco, Texas, asking if that endorsement was legitimate.
A few weeks later, I received a call from an anti-terrorism investigator at the Defense Criminal Investigation Agency. Apparently, someone had looked at the claim of FAA approval and the claim of U.S. Army approval [xcelplus.com], and decided that this might be a case of selling unapproved aircraft lubricants to the Department of Defense. So the case was referred to the sabotage/anti-terrorism investigators.
I'm not sure what happened then. But the spam has stopped, and XLPI is down from $0.50 to $0.04.
Re:Quick! Call the government! (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:"Serious error in judgment"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Would you care to explain which of those causes the Casimir effect?
As an aside, I agree with you that a sticker will not make batteries last longer. However, if someone else has tested it and found some anomalous effect, legitimate science has an obligation to try to reproduce the experiment - Most likely to refute it, but maybe, just maybe, to discover a radically new phenomena that no one noticed before.
Like the shape of the Earth. Or its location relative to the Sun. Or that rocks fall from space. Or the true spectrum of black body radiation.
Most of the time, such rigor will simply unmask charlatans. But to completely ignore reports of an unknown effect reduces science to no less a discipline of "faith" than any mainstream religion.
Sticky Bit (Score:3, Interesting)
Slashdot chewed over? (Score:5, Interesting)
Slashdot didn't "chew over" the original story. Slashdot simply re-posted the company's bullshit press release in it's entirity.
Was the story posted in the funny section? No.
Was there any comment from the editor regarding the product's obvious scam factor? No.
Was there an update to the story to say, "Whoops! We got suckered! Sorry." No.
So you see Slashdot didn't chew it over - Slashdot swallowed it whole.
The sticker + instructions works great! (Score:5, Interesting)
You see, the instructions quoted in the article tell you to fully charge and discharge the battery like 4 times.
Here is why:
If you discharge a lithium ion battery completely to 0 it could explode when you charge it. So there is a meter in the battery (usually) or on the logic board of the phone (not usually) that prevents total discharge. That is, at a pre-defined level of discharge, it turns the phone off. Now, the meter can get out of callibration. When you fully discharge and recharge the phone it can put the battery meter back into calibration, and doing it repeatedly will fix it better.
So you see, you might get up to about 30% more battery life, because the meter is out of whack and is cutting off your phone when there is still plenty of charge.
Basically they are selling you the instructions to fix your battery, plus a sticker that does nothing.
Computer batteries are the same way.
Disclaimer: Fully discharging Lithium batteries is bad for them. They do not develop memory like other battery types. However, when the meter is out of calibration it pays to do this a few times, just don't over do it, since you only get between 500 and 1000 full use cycles out of the batteries regardless of what you do.
Re:Sticky Bit (Score:2, Interesting)
The other side of this is that if you rotate the phone 180 degrees it will get worse. At best this is shielding your phone from noise from other more distant towers or other phones/other sources of noise, thus making the antenna more directional.
To completely shield your phone from noise wrap it completely in aluminum foil and put it in the microwave. (Microwave optional)
from the folks that brought you the (Score:1, Interesting)
other interesting products worth checking out
fractal antennas
XcrossH or 'crossfield' antennas
'tornado' throttle body restrictor
1000mpg carburetor
'skycar'
if you've seen the motor oil additive demo with the weight on the lever to stall the motor comparison please note that the regular oil is tested with a large surface area contact of a different material than the 'special' oil. the test jig uses a roller bearing, what they don't tell you is that only the surface is hardened...so when the 'worn' portion is demoed with the 'regular' oil you are actually comparing material with a greater coefficienct of friction than the hardened portion with the 'special' oil...
snake oil is snake oil is snake oil even in the 21st century
now baby, go get my 'blue pills' that are just as good as the viagra(tm)