Cordless home phone battery life- 8+ yrs old

[UncleS2]

The home cordless phones, a pair of Panasonics w/main & extension bases, were rc'd as a gift for Christmas '05 & went into service May '06. After digging out the manual tonight(seems to have been an answering recorder glitch), going through menus & checking & resetting some things, the allegedly fully charged battery ran down pretty fast- about 1/2 hr phone call, + about 1/2 hr of menu-surfing & resetting things. Manual claims about 5-hr talk time, maybe even true with a new & fully charged battery. With a few rare exceptions, this phone stays on its home base almost all the time & has since new. The other phone lasts for several days on standby when off the base as my bedside phone. Still, batteries are 8+ yrs old. Time to replace the batteries on general principles? Or- since one still seems good maybe try a few charge/discharge cycles on the "main" phone? Batts are Panasonic HHR-P105 NiMH, genuine Panasonics are under $12/pair shipped, no-names from 3rd-party Amazon sellers just over $5/pair shipped.

Or maybe I should just drop the land line!

 

[901Memphis]

Get Genuine Panasonic. Yes probably time to replace them, unless you plan on buying a new phone. It's not fun to have your phone battery die in an emergency.

If you can get them down to bare AAA cells like i think they are you can replace them with Sanyo Eneloops and get much longer runtime.

You can probably easily do a custom pack with some light soldering if they come out, a project for the old pack?

 

[mattwithcats]

Replaced the batteries in my cordless phones (900 MHz) two years ago.

Two places to haunt, Radio Shack, and Batteries Plus (+)

I found mine at Batteries Plus for $12 each...

If you do the DIY replacement, mace sure you match the type, NiMH to NiMH, NiCad to NiCad, and get rechargeables with solder tabs.

Watch the milliamp hours too, a good AAA should have 750 or more, an AA 2500 or more...

 

[earlyre]

replace them.
we have a similar Panasonic system, base station and 3 handsets (came with 2, bought an extra handset, and a range extender) mostly stay on the chargers 24/7. ours stopped holding a charge much longer than a few minutes after about 3 years.

open the battery cover, SCORE! these just use standard rechargeable AAA's!(Either 2, or 3)no packaging, or wires & tiny plugs!replaced them all with Rechargeable Duracells, and so far(2years)so good!

 

[Sawdusted]

Originally Posted By: mattwithcats


If you do the DIY replacement, mace sure you match the type, NiMH to NiMH, NiCad to NiCad, and get rechargeables with solder tabs.



That is not true. You can interchange NiMH and NiCad batteries (not in the same pack of course). You can put NiMH in place of NiCads. Just don;t use LiIon in the Ni-based chargers.

I bought several packs of their high capacity NiMH from Harbor freight several years ago and they are still holding up good. About $7 for a pack of 4 IIRC. 4 years ago when new it would give me 4 weeks of standby time (no phone use). Now it's down to about 10+ days.

If there is space in your battery compartment, you do not have to get the tab-less batteries. Just solder them up.

 

[JamesBond]

I bought some no name eBay replacements super cheap. If you need two, buy at least three.

 

[bigt61]

"no-names from 3rd-party Amazon sellers just over $5/pair shipped"

I've had good luck w those actually. Land lines are hard to give up, especially when you have extensions in ever room and the garage. When the power goes out, which happens here regularly, you can still make a call - unlike internet based systems.

 

[EdwardC]

I think that you can technically put in a NiCd in a NiMH, but I don't think it's recommended. Their operating voltages are similar, but the charger is most likely designed for NiMH and could damage the NiCd in the long run. The NiMh typically has a higher capacity than a NiCd of the same size.

I don't think you'd want to NiCd anyway, they're getting tougher to find and NiMh is what the device is built for.

I wouldn't personally save the cash and get aftermarket batteries, I think that they'd work well enough for this application.

 

[UncleS2]

Wow! Looks like a mere 8 yrs is long enough, then. Guess I'd better order some pretty soon- though the main phone now shows a full charge, it seemed to charge sort of slowly & reluctantly.
A few points:

*This is a 2.4V, 830 mah NiMH battery pack. The pack for one phone looks like it's probably made from 2 AAA batteries, but would take some engineering to just use 2 AAA batteries for replacement. Doesn't seem worth it to me since I'd have to buy AAA rechargeables, better just to get the plug & play battery packs.

*I was wrong about real Panasonics- those for $12 shipped for 2 packs are after-market of unknown specs. Real Panasonics seem to run ~$11-$12 or more *Each*.

*The 2-fer-$5.25 shipped are only rated at about 600 MAH, & there are lots of complaints about short run times. The seller even "whites out" the MAH rating on the photos- so that's not such a good deal after all.

*Found some priced 2-fer-$7.50 shipped, fulfilled by Amazon, rated at 1000 MAH & w/excellent reviews. Looks like a winner, think I'll order those. After all, that's just a hair more than 2 gallons of gas!

Thanks for the advice & help- as always, BITOGers are the best! Link to what I ordered: Batteries at Amazon

Edit: Amazon fulfillment required another $2x.00 order for free shipping, so went with another seller for $7/shipped, then found I had a few bux credit on the card, so: 2 battery packs on the way for less than $4 shipped! should arrive next week.

No- Thrifty, not cheap.