CF-VZSU46 battery condition indicators

Hi there battery experts... I have before me two CF-VZSU46 batteries. One came in a low-hour CF-30K, it has a manufacture date of 03/2010, a Full Charged Capacity of 84360 mWh and a Total Charge Index of 66. The other is a "new, genuine" one from Hong Kong, manufactured 07/2007, FCC 81950 mWh and TCI 0.

All else being equal, which is likely to live the longest? Does TCI trump FCC, or is 2007 just too much worse than 2010? Milliwatt hours I understand, but I can't find an explanation anywhere of what "total charge index" actually means.

As far as I can remember, all the pictures I've seen of "new genuine" batteries out of China have had some kind of 'tested OK' sticker on them that the in-machine batteries don't. I'm guessing that Panasonic offloads their 'near use by date' batteries as a job lot, and the onseller gives them a quick checkover and sells them at half price.

 

I would bet on the first battery, but both are old enough to be almost dead (bad storage etc.) )
Calibrate them and check their real capacity.
I'm also sure that total charge index means nothing in these batteries. My CF-VZSU48 batteries show random numbers in TCI. Current battery has "1", though I recharged it many times

 

I've just finished recalibrating both of them with Panasonic's Brecal.

If they were suspect due to age and storage, wouldn't this show up in the FCC? Or does that tend to be OK until it suddenly falls off the cliff?

 

Hong Kong ?? If I am right all Panasonic batteries are made in Japan.

 

The seller on our favorite auction site is in Hong Kong.

 

So where is the battery made...Hong Kong or Japan ? Does it look like the same battery.

 

Truth is that there is NO guarantee with batteries. Brand new original can have a cell go bad and be useless in a few months..or sit on a shelf unused for 5 years and be junk...Some aftermarket Hong Kong batteries turn out to be great..The majority do not last as long as an original battery.
But there are so many different factors...Condition of your charger.. Type of cells inside battery, how you use the battery. Temperature you use the battery at.. if a small component inside the battery fails...
sadly a battery may give you 5 hours runtime today and if just one cell fails, you get 15minutes runtime tomorrow...

 

They look identical, except the ex-Hong Kong one has an extra little sticker with printed red asian characters and something jotted on it with a biro. It came in a genuine-looking plastic bag, but no box. Serial number on this one is 775B, and the one out of the machine is A3GE.
My guess is that it is genuine, but if batteries sit in Panasonic's warehouse for too long then they sell them cheap to the Chinese resellers. Or perhaps they toss them and the garbage pickers sell them on.

 

Sounds like you have a China "knock-off" ( counterfeit) battery to me. Panasonic makes there own batteries in there factor in Japan. A big company like Panasonic would not sell there old stock to Chinese resellers. Doing something like that can back fire and can hurt there reputation. The below picture is a couple of my 19 batteries.

The China and Hong Kong sellers are now making there parts very close to the OEM parts but if you look close enough they are crap. Look at the port covers for the 19. The China one's look close but they are not water or dust proof, no rubber seal on the cover and the Toughbook badge they sell now is off color and Toughbook name is painted on...not raised black letters like the OEM parts. A lot of USA/Canada sellers are selling this crap now and letting you think these are OEM parts but they are not.
Sorry for going on like this but we get a lot of new Toughbook owners that don't know the difference and end up losing $$$ in the end..

 

Sure, I agree with you about the non-genuine parts. If these batteries are knockoffs though then their attention to detail is pretty impressive. Brecal and Panasonic Information Viewer work fine and the internal manuf. date matches the serial number. If I was a Chinaman going to all the trouble to understand and duplicate all the battery internal circuitry I'd at least update the manuf. date a bit. )

This is the one I got from HK:

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/8-55Ah-G...11?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_15&hash=item27f8bbc717

I've ordered another couple; if they all have identical battery ID numbers I'll be much more suspicious of them.

I looked for some statement from Panasonic about counterfeit Toughbook batteries and couldn't find anything. Other companies (like Canon) take this very seriously, with 'ours and theirs' photos and dire warnings about the consequences of using knockoffs. I bought a Canon camera once with a counterfeit battery swelled up and jammed in the bay.

Back to the technical stuff, if there is a chemical degradation in the battery due to age/storage conditions, would this reduce the total charge capacity as seen by the info viewer?

 

Crap...I got a little mixed up on the battery. I meant to post that picture on another forum. I will get out my 30 batteries and check them.

 

Here are my 2 CF-30 batteries. As you can see they are both different. The top one look like yours.

 

I am betting the battery from Hong Kong is a fake.....
Those little Chinese stickers are a bit of a give away....Those stickers seem to be manufacturing stickers...
A reseller is NOT going to open every packaged original battery and put 2 stickers on it.
Also in the ebay ad it says "Made of highest quality cells!"...A REAL battery uses only PANASONIC cells..Any legitimate seller knows this.
New Panasonic batteries come in an official Panasonic box.

Yes the fakes are that good....Next to impossible to tell anymore...Large retailers such as Best buy and Walmart have had fakes on the shelves and did not know it...Sometimes the only way to tell is look at the molding details, mold marks, quality and neatness of assembly, etc...

Panasonic would never let batteries that are not perfect quality on the market...Defects get destroyed, not shipped to Hong Kong to be sold.

Take some time and Google counterfeit batteries..You will be shocked.....I am betting 75% of all NEW batteries on ebay are fakes....

Check that sellers negative feedback....A LOT of complaints about counterfeit batteries...

 

I am not sure who it was but a few years ago someone opened one of there batteries up and to there surprise it was not a Panasonic batteries inside but some china one's. It was a fake

 

Just to give you an idea,a new battery for a CF-52G from Heartland is $249+ shipping. The only battery's I have bought from China were the CF-74's as they were the only show in town at the time. They were decent and a good seller but it was that or nothing.

I'll bet that CF-30 battery is $300 from Heartland.

 

There are sellers in China who sell used original Panasonic batteries. Good batteries.
But if you ask a friendly chinese seller about new original batteries (not just Panasonic, but any brand) he will tell you all "original brand new genuine" are fakes )
So I prefer used original Panasonic batteries for Toughbooks and chinese non-original batteries for other laptops

 

hmmm ...
about those chinese wannabe batteries .
a few months ago i was working on my '30 and building one for a friend .
i ordered up a chinese special and after some kind guiding words from a couple of members , i ordered up a *used* battery from a seller on ebay (i believe he was recommended or green-lighted) .
this particular battery had low hours and good watt hour numbers .
the chinese battery checked out ok , charged nicely and did not try to go into the chernobyl mode .
the used battery gave me about 4 hours run time with my particular power settings (which are pretty close to the rock-n-roll mode) .
i put the chinese special in my friend's machine ... so far it has held up and gives good run times comparable to my battery (varies depending on what is being done) .
did i luck out on the wannabe purchase ? time will tell ... caveat emptor .
oh yeah ... i put my '30 on the shelf for about 1.5 months and checked it last night ... the battery was flatter than a pancake from self discharge .

 

Not necessarily self discharge...The CF30 draws power even when OFF.. Most Toughbooks do...
In storage, pull the battery...

 

any idea how many mA it draws in the supposed *off* mode ?
i have stashed the '30 for a couple of weeks at a time (think trunk of pontiac and CRS) ...
the battery was down a little but this last go-around was a quantum leap .

 

No real idea on the exact draw..I know the GPS draws power....Something else does...Can't recall what....

 

I have about 20 of them laying around and all the battery's are dead from sitting,doesn't seem to bother them as they charge back up and hold a decent charge.

 

It seems unanimous, there is no such thing as 'new, old stock' genuine Panasonic batteries. Pity, it was a nice theory while it lasted... (

As much as I dislike non-genuine parts, it's hard to justify putting a $300 battery into a $300 Mk1 CF-30. I could buy secondhand, but if the fakes are so hard to pick then what guarantee is there that I'm not getting secondhand fakes - whether the seller is aware of it or not? I was kinda hoping that the TCC in the Info Viewer would give some idea if a battery was likely to be junk.

 

unfortunately , the software can tell you the theoretical WH (power density) and the theoretical hours of run-time but it cannot "figure out" the quality of the cells used in construction .

i have asked the question : why don't ya just split a crap battery open and drop in (so to speak) new quality cells .
as i understand it ...
it turns out that panasonic has a special little tattle-tale IC in each battery and once a cell goes bad or some other "out of parameter" event takes place , the IC says "nope ... we aint playin' no more" ...
this extends to the hours of run time and charge/discharge cycles ... no way to reset it .