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The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

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Re: The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

#91

Post by pjc50 »

CONTRARlAN wrote: post #84
plorg wrote: post #65

Only partially related, but I have a friend who carries around a comically-large 14000 mAh battery[0]. Comically large as in about the size of three or four iPhone 6s's stacked on top of each other - he wore it on a belt clip. My other friends and I made fun of him. He always had his ridiculously large, power-guzzling phone plugged into it. But he insisted that he had it because it could jump-start a car (he's a mech…

I once had a friend show up to help me start a car that wasn't starting–we thought it was the battery but it turned out to eventually be a flaky ignition switch. It took us a good 20-30 cranks to eventually narrow it down to the ignition switch (when we bypassed it it started). I couldn't believe that little paperback-sized box was capable of doing that. And it was a relatively big, high-compression engine. I almost…

The engines and starter motors have been slowly getting more efficient over the years. I recently hired a car which, once up to temperature, would kill the engine when stopped and fire it up for you as soon as you put it back into gear. That feature wouldn't ship without a lot of confidence in the ability to start every single time without putting excessive wear on the starter.

Re: The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

#92

Post by chadgeidel »

pjc50 wrote: post #91
CONTRARlAN wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once had a friend show up to help me start a car that wasn't starting–we thought it was the battery but it turned out to eventually be a flaky ignition switch. It took us a good 20-30 cranks to eventually narrow it down to the ignition switch (when we bypassed it it started). I couldn't believe that little paperback-sized box was capable of doing that. And it was a relatively big, high-compression engine. I almost…

The engines and starter motors have been slowly getting more efficient over the years. I recently hired a car which, once up to temperature, would kill the engine when stopped and fire it up for you as soon as you put it back into gear. That feature wouldn't ship without a lot of confidence in the ability to start every single time without putting excessive wear on the starter.

You may already know this, but for those that are wondering - this is called "Start-Stop" and is built into many new cars. The feature saves about 10% in fuel usage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start-stop_system

Re: The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

#93

Post by CONTRARlAN »

pjc50 wrote: post #91
CONTRARlAN wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once had a friend show up to help me start a car that wasn't starting–we thought it was the battery but it turned out to eventually be a flaky ignition switch. It took us a good 20-30 cranks to eventually narrow it down to the ignition switch (when we bypassed it it started). I couldn't believe that little paperback-sized box was capable of doing that. And it was a relatively big, high-compression engine. I almost…

The engines and starter motors have been slowly getting more efficient over the years. I recently hired a car which, once up to temperature, would kill the engine when stopped and fire it up for you as soon as you put it back into gear. That feature wouldn't ship without a lot of confidence in the ability to start every single time without putting excessive wear on the starter.

Yeah, this was a supercar made a couple decades ago, which makes the whole thing all the more impressive. Probably a pretty inefficient starter motor on it, and no start-stop on it, obviously.

Re: The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

#95

Post by w8rbt »

masklinn wrote: post #63
mangecoeur wrote: post #12

Batteries that last a week would be nice in current markets too! Not just emerging ones. I personally still don't understand how flagship phones costing $100s barely make it through the day but still get rave reviews. I can't count the number of times Galaxy and iphone touting friends have become unreachable in the evenings because of this - I would have trashed those in a review, who cares about fancy features if yo…

There are plenty of phones which last a week or 4, usually in packages smaller than the average smartphones and costing a fraction of the price (without subsidies, because $100 is not the unsubsidised price of a flagship phone, it's off by a factor of 5 to 10). The smart part being the one that's missing, you can't power multiple radio antennas and systems (GSM, GPS, bluetooth, WIFI, ...) for 4 weeks, let alone multi…

You can buy them for less than $20. I bought a refurbished Tracfone LG 505C about 2 years ago. I use it daily. The battery lasts about a week.

Edit: I paid $9.99 for the phone.

Re: The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

#96

Post by bri3d »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #70
plorg wrote: post #65

Only partially related, but I have a friend who carries around a comically-large 14000 mAh battery[0]. Comically large as in about the size of three or four iPhone 6s's stacked on top of each other - he wore it on a belt clip. My other friends and I made fun of him. He always had his ridiculously large, power-guzzling phone plugged into it. But he insisted that he had it because it could jump-start a car (he's a mech…

On a car (at least an old one) the ridiculously robust lead-acid battery is used also to filter out spikes and to act as a voltage regulator. If you've ever wondered why the headlamps on a kick-start moped flicker while idling, that's what you get without using batteries as a filter. Li-ion wouldn't survive very long in this application AFAIK.

There are plenty of replacement LiFePO4 auto batteries available, and they work very well without needing much in the way of support circuitry. I think that it's mostly cost keeping lead-acid around (as well as operating temperature range and lifetime), not that nothing is suitable for the application.

The headlamps on a moped probably flicker because it uses a magneto instead of an alternator as its power source.

Re: The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

#97

Post by CrackpotGonzo »

jtchang wrote: post #23

Can we talk about the Nokia 8210 candybar phones? Circa 1999 this thing was indestructible and had battery life that would probably outlast 3-4 iPhones. I think there is a market for these types of phones again. Even if it was ugly it was durable and functional. There is definitely a market for a phone that can be dropped and still function.

Do you think there would be a market for a new dumb phone that had modern things likes contact syncing and threaded text messaging? I feel like a lot of existing feature phones would be great but they're just not that usable.

Re: The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

#98

Post by bri3d »

plorg wrote: post #65

Only partially related, but I have a friend who carries around a comically-large 14000 mAh battery[0]. Comically large as in about the size of three or four iPhone 6s's stacked on top of each other - he wore it on a belt clip. My other friends and I made fun of him. He always had his ridiculously large, power-guzzling phone plugged into it. But he insisted that he had it because it could jump-start a car (he's a mech…

My car runs off of a 3.3lb LiFePO4 battery. It has very little capacity compared to the 50lb lead-acid battery it replaced, but has no trouble sourcing enough current to start the car reliably. Lithium batteries have the ability to source tremendous amounts of current, which is why they're so popular in RC models. The best RC lipo batteries can source 65 times capacity continuously, and are often limited by the cell tabs, wires, and quality of solder rather than ability of the cells. LiFePO4 doesn't have quite the same power, but it's still more than enough to start a small car engine.

I think the reason why lead-acid is still common are:

1) WAY cheaper per capacity, by a TREMENDOUS margin (10x+).

2) Better low-temperature performance.

3) Better tolerance to being abused (overvolted, run dead).

Re: The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

#99

Post by LeUsername »

plorg wrote: post #65

Only partially related, but I have a friend who carries around a comically-large 14000 mAh battery[0]. Comically large as in about the size of three or four iPhone 6s's stacked on top of each other - he wore it on a belt clip. My other friends and I made fun of him. He always had his ridiculously large, power-guzzling phone plugged into it. But he insisted that he had it because it could jump-start a car (he's a mech…

If I understand your description correctly (and it is the way it should be done, whether jumpstarting with external battery dolly or using another vehicle), you had the battery pack connected together with that old monstrosity of lead-acid battery at parallel, which still had some charge left and also acted as a buffer.

It would be completely different story having the lithium battery pack connected as the main and ONLY battery and cranking with it four times a day.

A typical car battery can begin at 55 Ah 12 V, this is for a European downsized petrol engine (larger engine requires more, diesel requires more, electric accessories require more) from before the advent of start-stop systems (start-stop requires better batteries or even two of them).

That is 660 Wh.

I guess the weight and volume of this in li-ion would be similar to or slightly better than lead-acid (imagine roughly 10x laptop battery or 75x 18650 cell), but the cost would be a multiple even at manufacturing prices.

Next, the car battery can sit in freezing cold for several days to weeks at -20 °C and still crank or it can be frying itself all day under direct sunlight. This is deadly for li-ion. Electric cars have heating and cooling systems for the battery packs even when the car sits still in a parking lot.

Also, while driving, the battery sits next to hot engine. You can move the battery elsewhere (driver seat or trunk, like the second battery for start-stop systems), but you need high-energy leads and the engine heat is actually a benefit for recharging the lead-acid in winter.

Compare all these complications to price, simplicity and reliability of nicely recyclable lead-acid box...

Re: The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

#100

Post by ThomPete »

solidpy wrote: post #89
userbinator wrote: post #7

This is likely a truly unbranded OEM feature phone based on a Mediatek or Spreadtrum reference platform. Resellers then add their own branding to it. I couldn't find that exact one but a bit of searching turns up similar models: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/9000mAh-long-standby-power-ba... http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Original-H-mobile-X8-4... http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Original-Xiaocai-X6-...…

The main reason to use feature phones in my developing country is that they are not worth stealing.

Is this something you have sources on or just an opinion? Would be interested in knowing.
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