not what i have expected tbh

just yesterday i’ve put a wire through a blown smd fuse, these are also a thing (fortunately easy to diagnose)

some components fail more often than others, like caps or batteries, or are designed to, like fuses. sometimes it’s obvious after looking even without measuring

it’s kinda dogshit but for this application it (cmos version) would be good enough. or better than that, there are dedicated pwm signal generators. i meant this thing in terms of complexity needed

i think you can get away with resistors when you can work with 5V, up to 1.5A. lithium batteries need current limiter in series with voltage limiter, and this alone can be made in a very simple way, unless you want to know when battery is charged, or if you want extra efficiency that smps gives you, but this only makes sense for larger batteries (phone-sized and up) or when you want to handle everything to charger and connect battery to charger directly. then i think you need controller

my guess would be it’s a parts commonality thing, it’s not hard to make it the old way, there are datasheets for it too. sure you could probably make tiny and cheaper (30x10mm? maybe smaller) analog board with two chips and mosfet working as pwm controller and current limiter, but it’ll have different passives for different battery sizes and heater powers. or you could make one design with optional usb port that you might just not solder on, and depending on model you just put different firmware inside

then you have to interface with charger anyway so ig this makes some more sophisticated chip make sense

yeah it’s more efficient this way but all you need is ne555 + mosfet tho? still no need for it to be turing complete

all of these, and gas turbines too, are synchronous. some wind turbines are almost-synchronous and some use giant inverters which is probably one of bigger mass uses of power electronics today

it’s not all steam

ok fine i’d put there a current limiter which you can make with 2 transistors and a diode. no need for an entire microcontroller. it’s often included with batteries these days anyway

why does a glorified heater connected to a battery need any silicon attached to it?

they kinda do, it’s called forklift

well otherwise they could just wait it out

most of that (7% of profits out of 12%) in stock vested over 2 years, so samsung got themselves a breather here. it might be also that these shares are at peak valuation now

It just might be that it’s cheaper than disruption

techbros graced everyone else with disruptive, innovative methods of money laundering