EBL 1.5V AA Lithium ion Batteries (micro USB chargable)

[mwb1100]

A while back I was reading some thread about alkaline batteries spewing the juice in equipment that's stored for somewhat extended periods.  One of the things mentioned in that thread was that lithium ion batteries didn't have that behavior.

Another while back, I acquired an eBay Fluke 189 that was a "parts only" good price which turned out to only need a bunch of battery corrosion cleaned up.  Works fine now.  To avoid having another corrosion incident, I decided to get a set of these batteries:

  - EBL 1.5V AA Lithium ion Batteries

One interesting thing about them is that they have micro USB sockets to charge them (the set also comes with a USB-A to 4 USB micro B cable assembly).

I was just wondering if anyone knew details about these things.  They're not cheap - about $24 for a set of 4 today (which is considerably cheaper than when I got them back in November).  They're working well for the 189.

  - the cells have 1.5V when fully charged; they have some sort of circuitry inside to regulate the 1.5V from the LIon's natural voltage
  - they seem to stay at 1.5V until they drop off a cliff to 0V   

A set of 4 freshly charged in the 189 with APO disabled kept the meter running for 144+ hours (it was measuring a 4.7K resistor during that time).  I'm not sure exactly when it died, but within 8 hours of the 144m which is when I last witnessed it still running.  When I checked the 4 batteries, two were at 0V and the other 2 were at 1.5V.

I haven't timed how long they take to charge (I just leave them on the charger overnight).

I know very little about battery chemistry, so I'm just curious for comments - in particular are they maybe going to do something worse than an alkaline leak?

[thm_w]

Yes there is a buck regulator inside, as well as the USB charging circuitry.

They theoretically could catch fire, being li-ion. Although with cells this small they just tend to puff up when they die.