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!
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that’s the last electronic item they make without licencing out their brand
My travel trimmer takes a AA battery and I just keep a little USB charger for that.
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.
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.
Maybe it’s time to get a microscope
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.
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.
Don’t worry about it. It’s not a big deal. I’m just talking about AA battery-powered devices in general.
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.
Isn’t it to make sure that you’re not mixing two incompatible chargers? I have 2 Philips chargers that do fit (as far as I can see), but are not the same voltage. I’ve previously also had something like this where 2 fitting chargers were completely different electrically, one 12V AC and the other 9V DC. One time a family member mixed them up, bit luckily the extra voltage didn’t fry anything. I don’t mind having to get an extra charger of it prevents me from doing something dumb and frying my electronics.
Are you sure they charge with the same specifications? This might just be to avoid potential fire hazards & damage.
Yea, one might be
alkalinenimh while the other is lithium. Or maybe even just different flavors of lithium.does that matter? I though only the voltage and wattage would play a role
A lithium battery needs a charging pattern that reduces voltage as it gets closer to full. And overcharging a lithium battery gets real spicy real quick. You also don’t want to charge them too fast because spicy.
Nicad and nimh batteries (I erroneously said alkaline above) don’t, you just blast it with a steady voltage until it’s done, with some nuance for nimh that’s not worth diving into here.
Makes 0 difference. The charging circuit is in charge of that logic and will accept whatever voltage is supplied (within spec) and step it down to what the battery needs.
thanks!
After realizing both shavers and cordless toothbrush chargers are going this route, I gave in and installed these in the bathroom
Leviton T5632-BW R02-T5632-0Bw… https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002DQT22G?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
The electrical code in my area requires using GFCI outlet for outlets within a certain distance of water source. I don’t remember precisely the distance (and it likely vary a bit by jurisdiciton), but i know that in my bathroom, there’s nowhere beyond it.
In order to use that sort of outlet in a bathroom like mine, it would have to have GFCI protection as well as USB, be a second outlet wired to the GFCI protected terminal of a GFCI outlet, or be wired to a circuit breaker with GFCI protection built in, in the electrical panel.
If you have more than one outlet in your bathroom and only one is GFCI, they are likely already wired downstream of the protected outlet and will be protected.
In all my cases where I installed those, I got lucky and the GFCI protection is upstream in another outlet somewhere.
Coincidentally, I just got a knock-off Soda Stream from Phillips. It’s over $150 cheaper and works 2x-3x times better. I wanted to build something similar for a homemade soda bar concept, and discovered how truly cheap it can be to make soda and carbonated water at home. I was shocked at what a simple concept it is, and how much of a profit these sodas water companies make. Phillips even charging $50 for their system is a total rip-off.
Truthfully, I think the increase in quality in the Phillips machine is due to fewer parts is an “exception that proves the rule” as these in-bottle carbonators seem to work better with fewer parts. It’s just a pressure hose connected to a co2 tank. Literally, all of $6 if you were to build one yourself from parts on Amazon (or $3 if you got he Alibaba route)
I truly believe that the fewer parts the better in any DIY or commercial product due to the less chance of a failure in a part if there are fewer parts. This works fantastically for the “lower quality” producing companies, like Phillips.
My inventive and engineering entrepreneur friends and I call this “fewer parts the better” concept, a “Murphy’s law compensator” as the fewer parts there are, the fewer parts that can statistically “go wrong”
I have the cheapest Philips shaver. It is pretty mid. It came with its own charger. On the shaver’s side it looks like a standard ungrounded 220V female connection. But it actually is some propriety DC thingy. Very annoying. Why not just use USB-C?
cheapest Philips shaver
use USB-C
You can only pick one
Isn’t the standard a token amount of $1 or something for a license, I don’t think price really comes into it.
I imagine manufacturing USB C chargers is still more expensive than the shit we had 20-30 years ago, which you’ll find in the cheapest appliances
USB-IF only chargea for VID. You can use USB as charging port without any fees. Even with USB PD.
So even less of a reason then
cheapest house
fire safety
This is what regulations are for
Until recently the reason was waterproof ratings.
Phones never had any problem with it
Lol, are you 15?
15 years is forever for phones
Never is a long long time
Even thought I own a OneBlade (gift), I’m happy that my old-school, safety razor doesn’t have any of the problems these modern shavers do.
They are more reliable, and they give a better shave, and they aren’t plagued by planned-obsolescence, and…
I didn’t get a DE razor until I was in my late 30’s. Gutted that it took me so long. I never really liked electric shavers so used your average Gillette razor and suffered from irritation up until I switched. DE razors are cheaper (in the long run) and easily a better shave. Not to mention no irritation.
I’d say DE Razors are one of my life pro tips. It’s a shame the large majority of nations use the traditional safety razor but then marketing and advertising has worked it’s magic.
Philips was a great company decades ago. They’ve really gone to shit. Especially their CPAP fiasco (Respironics recall).
Philips sold most of their IP and companies use their name. Hue is not made by them either anymore. The CPAPs are made by another company that is owned by Philips. It’s all just a name now.
Good ol’ late stage crapitalism!
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I can tell you for certain, I measured my plug phiips (foil and ‘one’) and they are both 14VDC. So short answer is that the plug charger would blow up the usb trimmer you have (which is 5VDC).
The reason I know this and measured them, was because I wasnt sure the two plug chargers were the same, and I didnt want to blow up my philips one.
Also the charger is required to show its voltage and amperage output ratings.
This is true, but something about being an Electronics Engineer makes you want to check. (I didn’t even trust Philips to get it right, but they did.)
I didn’t go into detail, but simple Dashed/Solid line doesn’t tell you the whole story. Those simple wall warts are not fancy switch mode, or even old school rectified. I measured 14VDC unloaded, which I can probably guestimate in experience, to be a 9VDC loaded reading.
The actual reading on wallwarts are generally untrustworthy, unless its a thing from Samsung or apple, where the circuitry are what you would expect (switched etc).
If one of them is 5V then I have no idea why they didn’t use Type B or Micro USB.
Type B or Micro USB is the worst cable ever created. Change my mind.
I literally won’t buy a product that uses micro USB. It’s the only.standard cable I have used where I’ve had both cables and the connector on the device fail.
Just on a regularly occurring basis. They were always the failure point in my devices.
Absolutely garbage durability.
Absolutely garbage durability.
That’s why I also mentioned Type B
Mini USB is much less popular
Doesn’t break as often as Micro USB so I hate it slightly less. :D
Alternatives are worse
How is USB-C worse than either of them
Lots of pins, hard to solder, requires higher precision in PCB manufacturing. Type B has better mechanical properties.
Pretty sure most people here are talking about the usage side of things. If we were to go by effort to implement the connector, let’s just go back to serial ports
What device uses serial port for CHARGING?
Will if we’re only talking charging, USB-C should be as easy to implement as any of them, basic 5v is gonna work even without most of the pins connected
B is fine, just a bit big. Agree on micro though.
B is for big. My favorite plugs are C13 and Type B. Don’t know why.
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They used to be an insurance company. How can I trust them knowing that?
Wahl for trimmers.
Pretty sure they never were an insurance company. They’ve always made (consumer) electronics.
Yeah, think you are right and I got my wires crossed. I hear so many random facts at work and they all blend together.
Regardless, still Wahl. Have used Wahl for a decade or more to groom and have had zero issues.
Haha, no worries. Turns out there is a Phillips insurance company, just with a double L, rather than a single L.
They started out as a lamp manufacturer, not insurance.
are the voltages actually the same?
I don’t know how to check that, also can’t find the specs on the old one.
FYI, to figure this out you would look at the part that plugs into the wall. there’s a bunch of writing on it. at one point it will say something like " input: 120-240 VAC, output: 15 VDC 0.5 A". that’s true for pretty much all transformer bricks. like if you want to see how much a USB brick will supply it will say on there “5V 2A” or whatever.
I only checked the (new) one that is USB-a only and that didn’t have any writing on it.
USB is typically 5v.
I don’t see how it could be. One plugs into line voltage and the other 5v usb. The reason they changed the plug size is probably to keep OP from frying his new razor.
One plugs into line voltage
Well, but that’s not what’s coming out of the end that you plug into the razor. The wall plug for it contains a transformer that steps it down to 15V. Would still be a bad idea, but it’s not line voltage.
After seeing some other comments I see that is the case. The one I had plugged straight in with the transformer built into the razor. That is why I said probably though, since I couldn’t know for sure.
The battery died on my old shaver. Because I can’t leave well enough alone, I decided to see if I could replace it. Spent so much time tracking down the battery model number and looking for a replacement only to find out it’s a standard triple a. It’s identity was obfuscated by the stupid labeling. Soldered it in and bam, razor still works for several years.
ive got philips body groomer which in time become somehow a curiosity: once its fully charged it runs until battery gets dry as it should but if i by any chance press the button i need to the whole cycle charge
