I recently bought a cordless phone, which came with a NiCd battery. In the
manual it says:
"To reduce the risk of fire, use only 3.6V 850mAh Nickel Cadmium
(Ni-Cad) cordless telephone replacement battery pack."
I've heard about the dreaded "memory effect" with NiCd batteries, so
I'm interested in replacing it with a NiMH one. Someone who is
selling a 3.6V 1000mAH NiMH battery on Ebay claims it works with my
phone, but will it really be safe? Wouldn't want to install a NiMH
battery and have the house burn down.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: 3.6 at 850 is _close enough_ to 3.6 at
1000 that I think it should work. The difficulty with swapping
batteries around randomly however is not so much that your house would
burn down as it is that differences in those batteries could possibly
cause some slow degredation on your electronics unit and cause it to
fry out prematurely. Your voltage (3.6) is critical; you want to avoid
increasing _low voltages_ very much. A device which calls for 3.6
should pretty much be confined to 3.6. You can play around with the
amperage a bit however; 1000 will work fine with something rated for
850. But make certain the battery contacts line up correctly and do
not cause a short circuit accidentally. It would be a shame to waste
that new battery as soon as you got it. PAT]
