Chemistry: electrical current producing apparatus – product – and – Current producing cell – elements – subcombinations and... – Cell enclosure structure – e.g. – housing – casing – container,...
Reexamination Certificate
1999-08-06
2001-08-14
Brouillette, Gabrielle (Department: 1745)
Chemistry: electrical current producing apparatus, product, and
Current producing cell, elements, subcombinations and...
Cell enclosure structure, e.g., housing, casing, container,...
C429S179000, C429S100000, C429S121000, C429S097000, C320S107000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06274266
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to improved battery chamber contacts for handheld electronic devices and particularly to an elongated battery packet housed in an elongated battery chamber and having a plurality of electric contacts longitudinally located on the lateral sides of the battery packet and the battery chamber.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventional handheld electronic devices such as handheld PC, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), cellular phone (also called as mobile phone), household wireless phone, electronic dictionary, electronic game player, pager, walkman audio player, camera (includes digital camera) and electronic calculator mostly have a battery means to provide power supply needed.
FIG. 1A
shows a typical conventional battery means for a handheld electronic device
1
. It includes a holding chamber
2
and a bottom cover
4
to house one or more standard 1.5V non-rechargeable battery
3
therein. The holding chamber
2
is usually located at a lateral side, mostly a bottom side, of the device. The bottom cover
4
has a latch hook engageable with a latch slot located in the holding chamber. Such a fastening structure is not strong and could easily result in break away of the bottom cover
4
from the holding chamber
2
, particularly under external force such as accidental dropping of the device. It also gives an impression of low value. It further uses mainly non-rechargeable battery. For those devices which may also use rechargeable battery, a separated battery charging means should be prepared and provided.
FIG. 1B
shows another conventional handheld electronic device
7
which uses a non-standard rechargeable battery
8
. It usually has a plurality of electric contacts
11
, mostly four, transversely located on a surface engageable with equal number of electric contacts
10
located in the device
7
. The device
7
further has a plurality of fasteners
9
to hold the battery
8
. There are a number of drawbacks for such a structure. The battery
8
mostly has no standard size. Every manufacturer may design whatever it desires. It mostly cannot use standard non-rechargeable batteries. The fasteners
9
should be relatively large size to provide enough strength to hold the battery
8
as the battery
8
is usually heavier and bulkier than a standard non-rechargeable battery. The transversely positioned electric contacts
10
and
11
also make the whole device wide and bulky. If the electric contacts
10
and
11
are arranged longitudinally (in terms of the moving direction of the battery
8
), the battery and the device may be made slim and compact. However such a design may cause a new risk. When the battery
8
is incidentally not fully engaged with the device
7
such that the electric contacts
11
mismatches with the electric contacts
10
, e.g., the first three contacts of the battery
8
couple with the last three contacts of the device
7
, it will generate wrong signals or even causes electric short circuit and damages the device. This is a problem still begging for solution.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
In view of aforesaid disadvantage, it is therefore an object of this invention to provide improved battery chamber contacts for handheld electronic devices that are able to support rechargeable and non-rechargeable batteries, and are longitudinally aligned for avoiding wrong coupling and for shrinking the size of the device.
According to one aspect of this invention, the electronic device includes a device body and an elongated battery packet housed in an elongated battery chamber located in a lateral side of the device body. The battery packet has a plurality of longitudinally aligned and differently spaced battery contacts at one side engageable with same number of longitudinally aligned and differently spaced chamber contacts on a side wall of the battery chamber. Electric coupling between the battery and the chamber will be established only after all contacts are matched and engaged totally between the two. Uncompleted matching or wrong coupling of equally spaced contacts that happens in conventional devices thus may be prevented from happening. Furthermore the battery chamber has an end opening to receive the battery packet and elongated flanges to securely hold the battery packet. The device body may be made compact and smooth and has a high value appearance.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5667906 (1997-09-01), Huang
patent: 5928809 (1999-07-01), Ju
patent: 5935729 (1999-08-01), Mareno et al.
patent: 5958618 (1999-09-01), Sullivan
patent: 6004690 (1999-12-01), Van Lerberghe
patent: 6014009 (2000-01-01), Wierzbicki et al.
patent: 6127801 (2000-10-01), Manor
Alejandro R
Brouillette Gabrielle
Dougherty & Troxell
TelePaq Technology Inc.
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