The battery itself hasn’t been discontinued, just Aspire (the E-Cig company) isn’t putting their label on them anymore. Which is somewhat strange since Tony (owner of Aspire), apparently has a stake/part ownership of this Yongdelli battery company. But like any Chinese company, if you order enough of them, they will make them.
Also, the flashlight business isn’t even a blip on these battery manufacturer’s radar. It’s all about the world-wide e-cig business.
They actually have some pretty cool subtle white flowers that look like they’re straight out of a Japanese garden around the negative end, definitely the prettiest battery I’ve seen recently. So there’s that
I wish there were more 18350 flashlights. Now that we have a decent small cell it should be the standard for all new smaller lights that typically would take the RCR123. Unfortunately being a little wider and more than a little late it’s not going to happen very fast if at all.
I wished there would be a better 16340 cell. There used to be a high current 550mAh AW cell (the AW 16340 15C) but that one has been out of production for ages. I bet that if the right manufacturer is willing to make it, a 800mAh high current 16340 cell should be feasable.
If you go by cell to cell volume, and use what ever they figured out in the 18350 cell, A little over 800 mah should be possible.
The best high current 16340 cell I have tested is the Trustfire IMR16340 650 mah. Who would have ever guessed, someone figured something out that worked better over the pond. Still not on par by volume with the 18350 cell but maybe its coming.
If my math is anywhere near correct, applying the Aspire 1150maH 18350 tech to other form factors should give us about…
32650: 9051 mAh
26650: 5587 mAh
20700: 3197 mAh
18650: 2262 mAh
18350: 1150 mAh
14500: 870 mAh
16340: 817 mAh
10440: 272 mAh
10180: 95 mAh
Something doesn’t add up there, since some of those are way off. Like, 18650s are up to 3500mAh now. Perhaps we should look at how things might be if we could apply 18650 tech to other sizes:
32650: 14000 mAh
26650: 8642 mAh
20700: 4946 mAh
18650: 3500 mAh
18350: 1778 mAh
14500: 1346 mAh
16340: 1264 mAh
10440: 421 mAh
10180: 147 mAh
To estimate, I’m just multiplying the volume ratio by the capacity, where the volume is estimated as the inner cylinder with a wall thickness subtracted from both diameter and length. I tried a few different wall thickness values, and the thinner the wall the better 18650 looks compared to the others. These values used a wall of 2mm.
I tested the Efest here. 1100 lumen 16340 klarus Mi1C Resistor Mod - #13 by moderator007
Very similar to other 16340 in the 700mah range. Haven’t tried the IMREN, figured it was probably same cell as the Efest.
The best I found for high current was the Trustfire IMR16340 650mah.
I have not checked how you do the volume calculations, but capacity do not scale linear with volume, due to factors like thickness of metal can, cell top construction and battery roll construction. This means that the fill factor will be better with larger cells.
But it gives a rough estimation of where the newer technology has been applied.
i’m getting a kick out of my D4 with the 18500 tube . i like the size and think the 18350 would be too small . the 18500 fits nicely in the hand , filling up the entire palm nice to finally have a decent place to put all of my 18500’s that were having a nice long battery nap on the shelf .
Yeah, I used a super simple method of estimating. It just takes the cell dimensions, subtracts 4mm from each (to represent a 2mm thick wall), and uses the remaining volume. So, for example, a 18650 cell would be calculated as a 14mm x 14mm x 61mm cylinder. A 16340 cell would be 12mm x 12mm x 30 mm.