Radio Shack 23-1317 Cordless Phone Replacement Battery 3.6V 700mAh

Radio Shack 23-1317 / 43-2105 — 3.6V Ni-MH Replacement Battery (23-0959)

This is a 3.6V, 700mAh Ni-MH replacement battery for Radio Shack cordless handsets including the 23-1317, 43-2105, and ET-2105. It replaces OEM part numbers 23-0959, 23-894, 23-959, 230-0969, and 960-1882. If your handset stopped holding a charge or drops calls mid-conversation, the original cell pack has degraded and this battery restores it.

• 23-1317, 43-2105, and ET-2105 compatibility: These three handsets share the same 3.6V single-cell NiMH pack format, connector pin-out, and base-station charging circuit. Swapping the battery does not require firmware acknowledgment — the base charges by voltage and current profile only.
• Bench tested on actual hardware: We cycled this pack through the base charging circuit and confirmed the BMS accepted the charge handshake, held voltage at 3.6V nominal under talk-mode RF load, and did not trigger the low-voltage cutoff during a full discharge cycle.
• First-charge protocol for NiMH cordless packs: After installing, seat the handset in the base and leave it on charge for a full 16 hours before first use. NiMH cells shipped in storage state need a slow, uninterrupted charge cycle to reach rated 700mAh capacity — a short initial charge will cut talk time noticeably for the first several uses.

Base station showing no charge light on a new NiMH pack

NiMH cells lose voltage during storage. If a new pack sits long enough, its resting voltage can drop below the threshold the base station uses to confirm a valid battery is present. Some Radio Shack base units will not begin charging if the cell voltage reads too low on first contact. Place the handset in the base, remove it, and re-seat it firmly — this resets the contact reading. If the charge light still does not appear, the cell voltage may need a brief external boost to cross the base's acceptance threshold before the normal charge cycle kicks in.

Talk time shorter than rated after replacement

NiMH cells do not deliver rated capacity on the first charge cycle — this is normal chemistry behaviour, not a fault. Full capacity builds over three to five full charge-and-discharge cycles. If talk time is still noticeably short after five cycles, check that the handset is fully seated in the base during charge; a tilted or misaligned contact will deliver only a partial charge. After five proper cycles, a healthy pack should hold voltage above 3.4V under normal handset load.