Is there really anything special about cordless phone batteries?

[Dave2002]

Cordless phones typically take AAA batteries. These can have as little as 700maH capacity.
Because of the way they are used, with quite frequent charge-discharge cycles, they are likely to become defunct over time, perhaps a year or two. I usually just replace them with new rechargeable AAAs - the sort which don't self discharge at a high rate.

There are some batteries available on the river people site which are sold on the basis of being good for cordless phones, or which have attracted good reviews from people who claim that they have brought their cordless phones to life.

Is there really anything special about cordless phones which would require anything extra specail in an AAA battery? I rather doubt it, but I'm willing to be corrected. One of our phones made terrible crackling noises recently, which could have been the line, or could have been the batteries. I think things have settled back to acceptable now, as I recently changed the batteries, but I didn't replace with anything marketed as specifically for cordless phones. I did check the old batteries with a charger which is able to test for poor batteries, and/or recharge/refresh batteries which can be reconditioned, and it indicated poor capability.

[Beef Oven!]

I’ve often asked myself this question.

[Dave2002]

I’ve often asked myself this question.

What do you think the answer?

[indebted to A.A. Milne!]

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

It may be a bit like selling "digital headphones" for listening to CDs.

[Dave2002]

That's rather what I thought. Probably adds a few £s onto a pack of batteries, which may just be regular batteries - though hopefully reasonably good ones - marketed as special.

I do think that cordless phone performance does depend on the batteries though - and probably many people forget that these batteries do deteriorate with age. One new set per phone each year might not be at all unreasonable.