Need to replace Nicad Battery on Southwestern Bell cordless GH5850

Very probably you can find the battery under some other model. Try to shop somewhere where you can take the original battery for reference. Be sure to check the connector and polarity.

Fry's Electronics stores have large variety for many phones (Outpost.com - Internet web site)

E.H. Yost - Batteries America rebuilds about any pac made.

The original Nicad replacement is probably not available. You should be able to find a Nickel Metal Hydride battery with the same connector and comparable specs. Your old charger should work ok, but may not detect the battery charge condition correctly.

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:

It'll probably take a generic replacement type. Look on Ebay.

Graham

A NiCd charger is a very bad choice for charging a NiMH battery; their requirements are very different. It may seem to work, but the NiMH will probably have a much reduced lifetime.

Isaac

Forget trying to find the original battery if it's not at a local outlet. Examine the pack. How long, how skinny? IME most cordless phones take a pack consisting of three AA nicads. Buy a similar sized pack and swap the connectors. Be sure to observe polarity.

I always buy obsolete packs at Office Depot when they go on sale. As long as the cells are similar, the package is immaterial, be it a plastic pack (crack it open, discard the old cells, install the new) or a shrinkwrapped pack like yours.

jak

I want to thank everybody for their answers! I've never posted on this group before and you are all quite helpful. To Jak...and the others...I did look at pics on the internet and at ebay, but they look like different sizes. I was baffled by that. Why there would not be a standard. I'm not very mechanical/handy, so the idea of having batteriesamerica making me one sounds better. I don't really know how to 'swap connectors' though I suppose if someone could refer me to an internet site explaining it, I could learn :).

It's clearly the handset, and not the base, since I switched the phones, using the good one in the livingroom where I mostly do professional work. So I'm hoping it's just the battery, and that the phone itself is not failing for some mysterious reason.

Thanx again!

Ordinarily I'd agree, but since the original nicad replacements are unavailable there aren't many alternatives. As for the much reduced lifetime, that certainly hasn't been the case for me. I'm careful to pull the phone off the charger after a few hours. Vtech, the manufacturer of my ancient phone, told me their charger would handle the nimh batteries without any problems. It works better than the original nicad.

isw wrote:

There are 'many' standards. I redid one pack for a phone that had shorter than normal AA's, with standard-sized ones. It was just a matter of breaking out a plastic tab in the battery compartment. Given that there was room inside for the standard cells, I can only assume the company (V-Tech) used the smaller cells to save money. It worked fine.

The internet is not the best resource (IMO) for comparison. Going to a store that has a variety of these packs, like--well, like almost anywhere here in the States (Office Depot, Home Depot, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, the local hardware store...they all have 'some' replacement packs)--will give you a better visual 'feel' for what's available.

It's a matter of cutting the plug off the old pack and soldering it onto the new. Observe polarity (red wire to red wire--black to black) and use heat shrinkable tubing to insulate the connections. If this is beyond your capability, you're probably better off to proceed as you have.

I hope so, too. OTOH, cordless phones--even new--are pretty cheap these days. I buy them at thrift (second hand) stores. Many people simply donate the phone when the batteries die. I've yet to get a used one which needed more than basic cleaning and a new battery; but pass on ones which have obvious physical problems. I usually pay about $3-$5 for them.

jak

That sounds like the AE cells I had to use for old Regency handheld battery packs. BTW, I used an old business card to cover the ends of the cells before I heat shrink that thin white sleeve over the cells to prevent shorts. I also used a fine line Sharpie to write the date and customer's name on the heatshrink first, which leaves a permanent marking that can only be removed by cutting it away. It keeps people with lots of the same battery packs from claiming a pack didn't last through the warranty.

Just want to update everybody. This site helped me:

Interstate batteries. I called him and he had me read him the P/N. He said it was made by Golden Peak and that he had a 600mAH or whatever that is :), anyway that is less than mine (800) but since by the same maker, and the same height and length, it would likely work, just give me a little less talk time. He said that is also the likely cause (the battery) of the LCD fading. So I hope it works. The battery was less than $15 including shipping.