Edit: see comments for clarifications.

I am probably late on this one, but god damn this is one nasty trick by Philips.

Context; I recently decided to upgrade my shaver, from a Philips One Blade to Philips an all-in-one-trimmer-7000. As you can see on the pictures below, they changed the charger for the adapter by maybe 1–2 millimetres, just so the old charger could not be used by the old charger. Now, this normally isn’t a big deal, but with the new trimmer, the charger is USB-A only. Where’s the previous one had the plug on it instead. To me this is mildly infuriating as I know need to get an extra adapter just to charge my shaver in the bathroom. They had the exact same design for the chargers, yet changed it just slightly so they wouldn’t be able to be reused? Why… Philips… why?

Edit: many good points in the comments! I don’t know how to manually check the voltage, but seems like folks figured it out in the comments too. Should have just been USB-C!

  • Flying SquidEnglish
    6•9 months ago

    I’ve seen rechargeable batteries with micro USB ports in them so you can charge the battery directly, you don’t even need a charger. I thought that was pretty nifty.

    • @JimVanDeventerEnglish
      2•9 months ago

      Could get those. Might be a good option for some. I just have a lot of rechargeables already for smoke alarms and clocks and what have you. I think I would find plugging in every battery individually to be more trouble. Even finding micro USB cables around the house is becoming a challenge.

      • Flying SquidEnglish
        2•9 months ago

        Totally understand. I just wanted to mention them because I thought they were a cool idea. I don’t own any myself, just standard rechargeables. That said, most of my devices that take AA batteries last so long at this point that I rarely have to change them. I’m guessing a shaver is a lot more power-hungry than most though.

        • @JimVanDeventerEnglish
          2•9 months ago

          I don’t actually know how long it lasts; I’m unusually vigilant about swapping batteries. I just put a fresh one in the razor, I’ll let it wiggle itself to death and tell you how long that takes.

          • Flying SquidEnglish
            2•9 months ago

            Don’t worry about it. It’s not a big deal. I’m just talking about AA battery-powered devices in general.

            • @JimVanDeventerEnglish
              2•9 months ago

              Yeah, I just did some math instead. Toothbrush is a similar wiggly thing and it will supposedly run 720-ish minutes on a AAA battery, so more than that, probably.