Reliance on Li Ion batteries in Oly Pen series

Marty4650 wrote:

Big Ga wrote:

Marty4650 wrote:

When a battery is discontinued by the OEM, then there is more incentive for third party battery makers to sell them.

As long as there is enough demand.

Right now, you can still buy third party batteries for digital cameras much older than those Olympus models. I did an internet search and found third party batteries still being sold for the Canon Powershot G1.... a model released 15 years ago in 2000.

Hmmm... Do you think that it might, possibly, ever so slightly, have a teeny weeny something to do with that battery also being used on about a zillion other Canon cameras? Wasn't that type also in the 20D, 30D, 40D etc ??

And the fact that Canon sells god knows how many more cameras than a company like Olympus!

And the BLM1 batter that the OP was fretting about was also used in multiple cameras too.

Those two batteries alone power a large part of the past ten years of Olympus' digital camera production. Do you really think no one will be making them? A simple google search will show you a few hundred different vendors selling a dozen or so different third party brands of these two battery sizes.

I'm still not worried. And you shouldn't be either.

I rebuilt a dead BLS-5 from Ebay that the seller didn't want back.  I used Sanyo cells pulled from two used cellphone batteries, and still got 1200 mAh (better than OEM.)

It's not easy, but it's easier than replacing the battery in an iSomething.