camperotacticoI wish the Steam Controller used AA batteries
poddusYeah. AA batteries suck though! I’d be happy if they used 14500 cells or something. but the form factor was probably the issue, the controller is a chonk in the middle already with the flat battery pack
I think you might be onto something. Probably the reason why they went for a built-in battery is space limitations
Did anyone see the MASSIVE rumble/haptic motors in the grip area? Yeah. This is the answer. They packed a lot of stuff in there.
Nowadays you can get AA-shaped lithium cells. Anyways I hope free battery is easy to replace after 2 years.
DremorAccording to reports it is. Not as easy as a hot-swapable une, but close. You just have to remove the back panel, pop it out and put the new one. No adhesive involved.
Week one, somebody’s going to release a CAD file for a 3D-printable shell with a removable battery cover.
18650 is awesome, a good balance of weight to capacity. They are the standard cells used in laptops, vapes, small powerbanks, power tool batteries, and so on. They can also go into a fairly standard charger for AA and AAA batteries and give a lovely nominal 3.7V.
That said, pouches are better for inside a device like a controller. The weight of a battery is significantly influenced by the casing. A pouch is almost entirely capacity, a cell like an 18650 or AA is largely the metal of the casing. If you have the pouch inside the plastic of the device you can save that weight.
I think laptop batteries are usually thinner than 18650s? All the ones I’ve seen are, anyway
Perhaps more modern ones, but the ones in my last and current laptops are both 18650s. 6 cells, 9 cells, you stack in series to increase voltage, parallel to get more capacity, so a 3s2p would have ~14V which is more than the required 12V for internal components, no boost converters needed. That said, now they do a lot of pouch batteries which are actually multiple internal pouches run in series to get the same sort of voltage but made with the chassis fitting them perfectly, no wasted space.
How much more modern are we talking? I’ve a 72 whr battery in my 2017 Yoga 720 that is a slim pouch.
Or rather, how old is your last/current laptop. Or is it a workstation replacement brick?
People forget we had hot-swappable li-ion batteries decades ago in phones and DSLRs. They absolutely could’ve done that with no to minimal form-factor changes.
Hot-swappable battery meaning without turning off the device?! Lol I’ve never seen that 😉 I get what you’re saying though, but from what I’ve seen the battery is replaceable! It’s retained with a screw but that’s not a deal breaker imo. Using a standardized form factor would have been even cooler, but I think that would’ve been very difficult for space reasons
Some laptops used to have that. They would have two batteries, one internal one and one hot-swappable external one.
Ahem, my x250 Thinkpad is still chugging along with its two batteries .
Hot-swappable maybe not the right word. I mean those which you can swap without hardware. Like this youtu.be/KKUvHL6Pyes
How to Pull Out Battery on Canon EOS Rebel DSLR - Eject Canon Battery to Charge Charge Camera
First thing I did to my Xbox controller: I got a Li-ion battery because I don’t always have AA batteries around and recharging NIMH takes forever.
What’s wrong with connecting a charge cavle to your controller? It does not stop you from gaming.
edinbruhYou can buy a pack of 4 NiMH batteries and use the other two when the first two recharge. The problem is not connecting a charge cable, but the fact that all rechargeable batteries eventually die, but NiMH batteries can be bought at the grocery store, and be replaced by anyone.
TruscapeYeah, but battery replacements, spare parts, and repair tutorials will all likely be provided by iFixit, same as the Steam Deck or (formerly) Index, and even if the battery goes out of production I’m certain a third party can manufacture a similar spec at the same form factor.
artyomSwappability is not a matter of the exact size and shape, but how many screws are needed to access it etc.
In your imagined world where the steam controller has AA batteries, the difference you’re taking about is the battery door, not the battery firm factor.
Yes but pretty much all lithium batteries are not easily swappable. And the difference is I already have a drawer full of rechargeable AAs. It’s a standard size thats readily available for purchase from 1000 different places.
I’m talking about the actual physical object and its characteristics. The part that affects time taken is the access to the battery, not the battery form factor.
It’ll take all of two minutes to swap the battery, chill out.
It’ll take all of two minutes to swap the battery
I don’t think you understand. This is something I do every few days. Swapping my AA batteries takes 10 seconds.
When Steam drops a battery door I’ll be less concerned. But they didn’t. And they won’t. And maybe someone else will make and sell them but then I’ll have to spend extra money to buy it.
Ok, and you’ll only have to swap this battery out after a couple of years, so what’s the problem?
Glad we’re agreed it’s about the access, not the battery itself.
what’s the problem?
I’ve already said what the problem is, several times now. I’m not repeating myself. Scroll up and read.
The problem as you’ve stated it compares replacing an AA battery (necessary very often) to replacing a rechargeable battery (only necessary when it’s health depletes after years), so your characterisation of it so far is unreasonable, which is why I asked again.
If it’s both you’ve failed to explain any inherent problem with non-AA batteries when it comes to the time taken to change them. I can change a the custom battery in my camera as quickly as any AA. Faster, even, than the typical AA sprung enclosure because of the housing.
(only necessary when it’s health depletes after years)
Incorrect. I replace them when they need charging. Pop the ones in the controller out, pop them on the charger, and pop freshly-charged ones in. 5 seconds.
I can change a the custom battery in my camera as quickly as any AA.
That is obviously not the case with the Steam controller.
you now need to buy special batteries from a particular source that likely won’t even be available for purchase 5-10 years on. Whereas AA are ubiquitous and can buy them from hundreds of vendors, and likely will be able to indefinitely.
Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean I’ve “failed to explain” it. I explain it over and over.
Why is 5 seconds every few days better than 2 minutes every few years? You just keep talking up how easy it is to replace AAs as if that’s somehow the only important thing? For it to be worse, it has to be worse than the alternative which you just don’t seem to understand is going to take up less time?
That is obviously not the case with the Steam controller.
How do you know? Do you have a preview?
But you’ve again completely ignored the point, which is that the non-AA alternative is quicker to swap, so the time to swap was never about the battery type, was it?
Once you’ve understood this we can talk about the point you never initially mentioned, but I’m not opening a new discussion when you’re being so willfully ignorant on the first one.
2 minutes every few years?
What? Where are those numbers coming from? You’re going to plug the controller in for <1 minute/year!? It only lasts 36 hours, and that’s best-case scenario projection from the manufacturer. I’ll go through that in a couple weeks…
> How do you know? Do you have a preview?
We all got a preview a couple days ago. There are images and videos of it everywhere. There’s no battery door.
the non-AA alternative is quicker to swap
Depends on what the non-AA alternative is, but usually not. And you’ve again ignored the point, which is that it’s both. AA batteries are not only much much faster to swap than most Li-Ion batteries, but also that AA batteries are readily available from a thousand OEMs.
I’m not going to continue repeating myself so if I stop responding to your comments, you know why.
2 minutes every few years?
What? Where are those numbers coming from? You’re going to plug the controller in for <1 minute/year!?
Why do you need to replace the battery after only a few minutes of use? Did you miss that you recharge it in the controller?
You only need to replace it when it no longer holds enough charge to be useful, which is going to be at least a couple of years. You’re not replacing the battery in your phone every couple of days, are you? Why would this battery be different?
Your edit:
> I’m not answering the same questions yet again.
I did not ask any questions in my last comment that I had asked before. You have never said why you think you need to replace the battery in the controller often enough for a screwed-down battery cover to be a problem. You have never said why the battery not being AA-sized makes it take longer to replace, when there are many quickly-swappable battery designs out there.
You have tried to say that the Steam Controller won’t be like that - but without evidence and without acknowledging that you said something wrong. That’s not very good.
I have had discussions with this person before and it’s not worth it haha. It doesn’t matter that this person will spend arguably more time swapping AA batteries over the years than the time spent replacing the built in batter one or two times during its lifetime.
This introduces the next problem: The AA batteries are constantly depleted and I always forget recharging them. Or I put them away and cannot find them when needed.
Skill issue. Feel free to pay more to compensate.
Rechargeable controllers didn’t use to have dock stations some years ago, how did you manage then?
You can still plug a controller with AA in and use it while the batteries are in the charger
Personally the worst aspect of my original steam controller is the AA batteries. Constantly have to swap them and sometimes low battery meant buggy inputs. I very much prefer an integrated battery that gets topped up when I put the controller back to its place.
But I can see why you and others prefer otherwise.
But I can see why you and others prefer otherwise.
Batteries and lack of audio are my only gripes with the steam controller. I still think it’s better than every other controller, but I wish it had those. At least though, valve said it will be easy to disassemble with a screwdriver, so we will have a way to replace the battery with an after market one when it dies.
I’m not aware of any controller that can charge NiMH batteries tho. I think the hardware for that would weight as much as the entire controller. Also NiMH batteries don’t do well with continuous charging via dock, unlike lithium batteries.
SatyrSackThey probably mean having a headphone/microphone jack. Thinking about it now, I don’t think I have ever actually used the jack on the few controllers I have owned that had one, but I can definitely understand why some would find it very useful.
I meant headphone jack. But what if I don’t care about quality and latency and just want audio on my device because it’s useful to have?
Also, I think the dual sense has audio haptics like a Wiimote?
Edit: also the controller has two other connections other than Bluetooth, that can easily handle audio better than Bluetooth.
Funny, the steam frame using AA’s was disappointing to me. There’s multiple types of rechargeable AA’s on the market and having them through the controller and not potentially cause problems would be difficult as I understand it. Valve has been pretty good about parts being replaceable and available, the steam deck’s parts are sold through ifixit.
There is no bigger disappointment than wanting to play some VR and your controller is dead and you have to charge it. Can’t really charge them while playing like on normal controllers either.
So I’m quite happy that they went with AAs this time around. Although I need to pick up some rechargeable AA batteries when the Frame comes out.
That’s fair that you can’t charge them while playing like you could a regular controller I hadn’t really thought of that.
PrimeErectiveI’m with you. I loved how the AAs slotted into the handles of the original steam controller. I bought some Eneloop rechargeable AAs for it that still work great. I use them in my toothbrush, which I also bought because the rechargable lithium version died. The AA battery version of the toothbrush was like 1/5 the price and will probably last forever
Big fan of controllers that get all their power from cables. Though I can see how that’s a bit inconvenient when you’re actually playing on a couch instead of in front of a PC.
You can remove the 9 screws in the back of the controller and fully remove and replace the battery. Going by valves track record they will have replacement parts on ifixit. Also one of the engineers confirmed while speaking with tested that you can easily access the battery compartment and interior of the device and replace it.
DampCanaryAnd I’m fucking going to do it every time it’d depleted. I have 4 AA batteries for my Xbox 360 controller, pop the cover swap them and continue playing.
It’s that easy.