‘Dumb’ batteries can also be charged but no SoH information is available.
“It wasn’t necessarily a matter of me not wanting to tell them,” says Manning. “I just maybe didn’t realize it. I’m worked up, I’m in the game, and I’m maybe HP Compaq Business Notebook NX5100 Battery able to put some things behind me and continue to play like I hope I can. It wasn’t really till the next day when I came in to watch film that I found I didn’t really remember half the plays that I was in [in] the game. I started to see myself but I didn’t really remember what I was doing, and that’s when I really sort of realized that I had had a concussion.”
Figure 4: The Cadex SM2+ charger This level-3 charger serves as charger, conditioner and quality control system. The charger reads the battery’s state-of-health and flags those that fall below the set target capacity. Each bay operates independently and charges Nickel-cadmium, Nickel-metal-hydride and Lithium?ion chemistries in approximately three hours. ‘Dumb’ FPCBP155 batteries can also be charged but no SoH information is available.
NiMH is the preferred choice for a user who runs the laptop mostly on fixed power and removes the battery when not needed. This way, the Fujitsu FPCBP160 battery is only engaged if the device is used in portable mode. The NiMH battery can thus be kept fresh while sitting on the shelf. NiMH ages well if kept cool and only partially charged.
This is based on concerns over charger quality, compatibility with new and old battery chemistries, administration of the correct amount of charge currents and accurate full-charge detection. Controlled charging makes sense when considering that some Laptop Batteries packs share the same footprint but contain radically different chemistries.
What then makes a battery ‘smart’? Definitions still vary among organizations and manufacturers. The SBS forum states that a ‘smart’ Toshiba PA3332U-1BAS Battery must be able to provide SoC indications. In 1990, Benchmarq was the first company to commercialize the concept of the battery fuel gauge technology. Today, several manufacturers produce chips to make the battery ‘smart’.