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Assault on mobile phone battery market by Philips with AAA inserts

by James Sherwood | posted on 21 February 2008

Philips has created a handset that stops dead your excuse of "I couldn’t call because my phone’s battery died," because its latest mobile phone accepts AAA batteries.

No surprise where the idea came from: Duracell was demonstrating this technology at 3GSM a year ago, in Barcelona. But someone else has run with it.

Dubbed with the curious name of 9@9j, the candybar handset has a standard lithium-ion battery inside and, should it run out of life, then the AAA battery, which slides into a slot at the bottom of the phone, kicks in to give the handset’s lithium-ion battery a little more juice.

The phone, which Philips paraded at this year's Mobile World Congress Barcelona, was developed in conjunction with Israel-based battery specialist Techtium.

It calls the 9@9j’s dual battery design Backupower and a company spokesman has told several online sources that the AAA battery will give the lithium-ion battery an additional three hours of talk time.

Philips’ 9@9j handset forms part of its Xenium handset trio, which are sold on their battery life credentials. For example, in 2005 the existing Xenium 9@9C clamshell handset made it into the Malaysian Book of Records for its ability to provide over eight hours of continuous talk time and 14 days in standby.

A release date or price for the Philips 9@9j hasn’t been given.