Battery life. The bane of modern smartphones. We’ve discussed this on the podcast as one of the aspects begging for technology innovation, and it looks like our prayers just might be answered.
A team from the United States claim to have invented a new type of battery technology, which provides TEN TIMES as much power in the same size battery. So you could have a battery ten times smaller, or one that lasts ten times as long, than your current smartphone. Sounds cool huh!
There’s quite a detailed breakdown of the technology, but all I really care about is not having to worry about battery life.
This isn’t the first time a revolution in batteries has been promised though. Yeah, remember fuel cell technology? Yeah… well that didn’t turn out too well did it.
There are clearly a few challenges left to iron out before something like this can become licensed, and safe for mass production. The people involved hope to be trialling it in consumer electronics before the end of the year, however.
Head over to the BBC for more info at the source link below, and cross your fingers (although not until the end of the year, obviously).
Source – BBC News
I actually have some involvement in this particular ‘breakthrough’ – at least on the periphery. It’s very exciting, I grant you. A university I did a lot of work with in the past couple of years contributed a great deal to the approach they are taking for the large-scale manufacture of this technology.
The thing that bothers me about the way it’s being publicised, is that it seems to suggest that this is the first high-capacity battery technology that has been proved to be viable. This is far from the truth. There are at least four other (completely different, I might add) notable battery technologies which could become commercially viable within the same timescale.
The next set of bad news is that this timescale looks to be slipping into the next decade, due to the inherent practical limitations of their manufacture (and in some cases reliability, stability and material cost). I’m not too connected with the commercials on this, however I am led to believe that to get manufacture of these units down to the level we currently enjoy on Li-Ion tech in smartphones will take at least ten more years.
My view on this is that given enough incentive, some of the bigger manufacturers (the scale of Apple or Samsung) could speed this up significantly, as could the motor industry. From what I know, and what I’ve heard, I’d say there is a good possibility of seeing one of these competing battery technologies in action before 2018. It almost certainly will not be as good as they claim, though by this time.
This is fantastic news.However I do agree with the previous comment. Phone manufacturers seem to be pushing ever harder on developing those visible enhancements yet the battery technologies barely gets a look in. Its the equivalent of fuel companies not developing hybrid and electric energy, when, if they find the break through, it will be a major financial boost.