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I have the standard Acer Aspire one 532h-2Db, I am looking to upgrade the battery from a standard 6-cell to a 12-cell ( for more longer terms away from the mains ) and I've hit a problem, I cannot seem to find ANY battery with the same voltage / more cells for my model.

This is the battery that I thought was compatible as it says 532h but I discovered its 0.3v over the standard and was worried it would cause damage.

Could someone help me and tell me if this will damage the laptop? Also if it is possible for a higher cell battery for this laptop?

This is the original battery

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    It becomes spam if you keep reposting. Don't do it.
    – random
    Sep 10, 2010 at 19:12
  • Ah I didnt realise :/ , thankyou does anyone know what's the answer?
    – Ben
    Sep 10, 2010 at 19:26
  • Let's leave the question for a few mins and we will see! :)
    – JNK
    Sep 10, 2010 at 19:28
  • will do :) sorry, I haven't had much experience here + got very worried with my choice of laptop as you can imagine :)
    – Ben
    Sep 10, 2010 at 19:32
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    .3v will make no difference, if it fits it will work. You can ask the seller a question on eBAy to confirm the compatibility with your system. The quality of the cells inside the battery is another question.
    – Moab
    Sep 12, 2010 at 21:28

4 Answers 4

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Can you use an external Universal battery similar to this? Universal Battery

I used one from APC for several years while flying. Worked great and fit the briefcase easily.

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  • It COULD be a possibility but does this hold more charge? I origionaly thought of using a literal car battery with a ac to dc converter?
    – Ben
    Sep 10, 2010 at 20:47
  • Car battery and inverter would naturally work. The APC one I had ran my P-3 Toshiba for 4.5 hours. Origianl battery was lucky to get 2.5
    – Dave M
    Sep 13, 2010 at 12:25
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With batteries/adapters current rules apply as in all cases.

The concern is not so much voltage as it is amperage. (it needs to be close though)

The biggest problems is if you have a too LOW amperage level, if this is the case the device will attempt to pull more current. This will act like holding a finger over a hose. you will actually cause damage if it is too low!

This is, of course, only true if the current is available to pull and I should mention that it is possible for over voltage to cause damage to sensitive devices, I'm am just speaking in a general sense.

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  • so are you saying that in this case it wouldnt work ? The Voltage for the 12 cell is 11.1volts + 10400mAh The voltage for the current battery is 10.8 volts + 4400mAh so shouldent I worry + I mean will it damage it ?
    – Ben
    Sep 10, 2010 at 20:45
  • are you referring to not how many amps it holds but how much it applies?
    – Ben
    Sep 10, 2010 at 20:49
  • bump? - need real help
    – Ben
    Sep 11, 2010 at 14:00
  • Heh, I'm not going to say either way since this relates to a potential hardware damage. But I will say in the past I've used over amperage levels fine and voltages further then the difference that you have.
    – Jeff F.
    Sep 13, 2010 at 16:21
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Battery voltage is a function of the cell voltage and the number of cells. Most types of laptop cells produce around 1.2 volts per cell, so, eg, a 12V battery would have 10 cells. A 12 cell battery would have twice the voltage of the 6 cell version with the same cells.

Battery capacity is expressed in ampere-hours, and is a function of the cells used. If you want more battery capacity you need to use (larger) cells with a higher ampere-hour rating.

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  • 1. Most laptop batteries (for at least 20 years now) use Li-ion cells at 3.7 volts/cell. 2. As for added capacity, they achieve higher capacity by using more cells in parallel, not by using physically larger cells. For my main laptop I have a choice of 6-cell or 9-cell batteries, the latter providing half again the A-h. Dec 17, 2018 at 15:47
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Short summary

The 12-cell battery will be fine. A difference of only 0.3V over 10.8 V will make no difference. Your laptop is already handling far wider variations in battery voltage than that.

Details

Your battery uses Li-ion cells, likely 18650 cells. If you look these up from component suppliers online you will find that some of these have a rated terminal voltage of 3.6 V, some 3.7 V. Three of those in series get you to 10.8 V or 11.1 V, respectively. So the difference in rated voltage is simply due to the choice of cells.

What really clinches the "it'll be fine" claim is this: Li-ion cells do not provide anything like a constant voltage anyway! When fully charged they are at 4 to 4.2 V/cell; voltage drops considerably as they are discharged; they are usually considered "fully discharged" at 3.0 V/cell or a bit lower. So your laptop has already been coping with input voltage of around 12 V, when the battery is freshly charged!

This works because the first thing that happens when current enters your laptop from the battery is that it's applied to a power controller circuit. This includes voltage regulators that use a "bucking" circuit to knock the voltage down to various voltages that the CPU, hard drive/SSD, screen, etc., need. These "end use" voltages will be considerably less than 10 volts - typically 5 volts or less! The voltage regulators can tolerate a very wide range of inputs. 0.3 V increase over 10.8 V is less than a 3% change. That's nothing. Don't worry about it. Enjoy the extra runtime.

btw, a laptop battery of course uses paralleled cells to increase the capacity (amp-hours or milliamp-hours). They arrange them with two or more cells in parallel, then these parallel sets are put in series to get the required voltage. This is because during charging, each paralleled set (3.7 V nominal) is charged and monitored individually, so connections to each point in the series string are brought to the outside. That's why your laptop battery needs so many contacts.

So your battery must use three paralleled sets in series. The six-cell must have three sets of two cells each, and to get your quoted 4400 mAh capacity each cell must be rated at 2200 mAh. This is a typical (though conservative) rating for older 18650 cells. The twelve-cell must be using sets of four batteries, and one would think that this would simply provide 8800 mAh. But, again, if you look at the catalogs for 18650 cells you will find that they are available in a wide variety of rated capacities. The numbers say that the 12-cell pack must be using cells rated at around 3400 mAh, which is not at all untypical, especially for more modern cells.

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