personal tech
We're not Li-ion, user thought mobile phone batteries died every few days
ON CALL Welcome to another installment of On Call, The Register's Friday column in which readers kindly share their stories of untangling tech support situations.This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Steve" who started his IT career doing tech support for a supermarket's own-brand mobile service."I started in 2006, when many phones still had removable batteries," Steve told On Call.
"One day, a customer rang in ranting and raving about how she'd just bought her very first mobile, had used it for two weeks, and now wanted to return it because it was faulty."
Steve naturally inquired about the nature of the fault."This phone is supposed to last for years," the customer replied. "But I've just bought a third battery to keep it running."He soon realized that whenever the customer's phone ran out of juice, she discarded its battery and bought a new one – because she assumed the battery was disposable, like those in many other devices.
