Cordless Phone Battery Toasted

cwcw

I have had a set of BT Voyager cordless phones for a few years and recently the charge to the batteries will only last a short phone call, so being a money saver, rather than buying new phones, I bought a pack of rechargeable batteries and changed the batteries.

I did this on Friday night and this morning my cordless phone started "crying" - turned itself to loudspeaker making all kinds of weird noises. I went to investigate and it was hot with a melting sound.:eek: I disconnected it from the charger, left to cool, and then carefully investigated. 1 of the 2 new batteries had totally fried and was still hot. The replacement batteries are not a cheap brand and they're NiMH 1000mah. The original batteries (which I've now put back in) are unbranded and also NiMH but only 600mah.

Could this difference in mah make the difference? My understanding was this would simply change how long they take to charge and the cordless charger should detect when they're full anyway?? If I hadn't been laying in bed next to the phone making the weird noises I dread to think what could have happened.

Heinz

Probably you just got one faulty battery.

Buzby

I've only ever seen this once before - the problem turned out not to be the battery at fault, but the charger supplying over-voltage. Have you another charger you can use before you fry another set? If the charger is OK, it may just have been a bad replacement set, and a new set required, but a good many chargers have unusual characteristics, and if they see the availability of a larger Ah, will push a higher voltage to fast charge - killing those batteries that cannot cope with this.

cwcw

The charger is the cordless phone's docking station. It has charged the set of rechargeable AAA batteries that came with the phone well enough for years, until I changed the batteries. It seems to be working ok again with the original set. The only other charger I have for AAA is the other phone docking station. I have another set of new AAA rechargeables but reluctant to test them now in case they start a fire while I'm at work! :eek:

Is it significant that only 1 of new set of 2 I installed melted down?