Wot Kim sez (but then its about electronickery, so you'd assume Kim has it right). My experience is indeed that the charging arrangements on the phones are shite, thus leading the batteries to an earlier death than is necessary. Mine is Panasonic, not a manufacturer I admire, and has a lovely colour display which would be state of the art for 1975, and shit battery life (one 40 minute long call and you'd better put it back on charge, pronto). I wonder if Siemens ones are better? The handset in my office has a set of eneloops in it, as I used to do hour long conference calls, so used it with a headset.