NEC's counterfeit cellphone battery blocker
By Peter Rojas 
posted July 7th 2004 8:00AM
posted July 7th 2004 8:00AM
NEC's new system which can detect the use of counterfeit batteries in cellphones and digital cameras and deny their use might help prevent teenage girls' asses from catching on fire, but it'll also give manufacturers the ability to charge even more for their already overpriced replacement batteries. Supposedly one major Japanese digital camera maker is already on tap to use this next year.
UPDATE: We just got a hot tip that Sony is planning to add something like this to their laptops, and that if the laptop detects a non-Sony battery it will simplyrefuse to work and prompt the user to insert an original one.
Wait, you forgot the added bonus of giving the consumer a big reason to avoid buying their products. What is it with this "Sony-like proprietary" attitude? I just don't get it.
We've been fighting the printer companies to prevent them from doing this very thing. We want them to allow us to use replacement cartriges from other vendors - bringing prices down through competition... but, now we're happy that companies will use proprietary interfaces to their batteries.
I expect the very next move is that these proprietary battery prices skyrocket and we're stuck with only one vendor for our battery.
Dell has been protecting against 3rd party laptop batteries for a while now. Add Apple to the list also.
With the printer cartridges, you can go ahead and argue that they are giving away the razor and over-charging for the blades... But with the batteries?? Get serious! These are $1-2k laptops with $50 replacement batteries. There is a consumer visibility issue. When the laptop battery dies after an hour of use while working on your term paper, the consumer tends to blame the laptop manufacturer, not the battery manufacturer. They have a real incentive to keep crappy batteries out of their products... Besides the fires!