Will batteries ever get better?

Occams_Beard_Trimmer · 3 months

Easy. Poke some holes in that shit.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15735478

Weed_O_Whirler · 3 months

Battery technology is a tough one to crack. Personally I hope that the Razer Maxx is a huge success so that manufactures start realizing "people are willing to sacrifice a small amount of thinness for a phone that lasts two days on a single charge."

While I hope battery technology improves I feel this is the one way we could get better battery right now with very little sacrifice.

JB_UK · 3 months

Yes, there are a ton of battery start-ups using nanotechnology to extend battery life, and it's almost inevitable that progress will be made relatively soon, eventually a ten fold increase, which seems to be the physical limit for Lithium batteries, and close to the limit full-stop for chemical batteries, but almost certainly a two-fold over the next decade. Amprius, started by Yi Cui, is the most high-profile. The other possibility is portable fuel cells, which I don't know much about, but which would have much higher energy densities. But, of course, when battery life increases, what's to stop companies from boosting processor power again? We have already made a distinct choice to prefer swooshy menus and 3D games to power efficiency.

porkchopps · 3 months

There are many, many companies working on the 'next big thing' in battery technology. No one has yet hit the sweet spot of inexpensive, long lasting, and easy to manufacture. There's all sorts of cool ideas out there though, including re-using the heat from your display to charge the battery, solar power, charging via WiFi, etc.

I think we will see a breakthrough eventually, but it might still be a few years. Until then, chip and display makers will have to continue to make their products with less and less power use. In just two years we've come from the OG Droid's smaller screen and weak (in comparison) 550Mhz processor to the Galaxy Nexus' 720p display and dual core 1.2Ghz processor, with a similar battery life at 3g speeds. (Arguably)

Code347 · 3 months

I have an eco-drive watch. It recharges either by movement or a light source. If this could be fit into a phone, just the daily movement of a phone could generate power. It would need to be developed further to get the voltage correct.

Ribbys · 3 months

Just got a Galaxy Nexus GSM.

I notice it charges faster than the Galaxy S I used before it. Also it uses less power to stream via TuneIn radio app. These are hardware improvements (dual core with less power draw, 3G+ is more efficient than 3G perhaps) and perhaps improved software that sips power a bit slower.

Its not just batteries that can improve.

GoldFireX · 3 months

I too would like to have longer battery life, but something to consider is this. Power density in phone batteries is much better than it used to be. The introduction of higher capacity batteries enables phone manufactures to use more energy hungry technologies in their products. I have a feeling that even if we get better batteries, the enhanced capacity won't mean as much as we are hoping for.

REEB · 3 months

Droid RAZR Maxx. May not be the type of battery innovation you're looking for, but nearly double the capacity as other phones in its class is a step in the right direction. It's still pretty thin, too.

m00nh34d · 3 months

The technology exists. Unfortunately there is far too much R&D going into other areas like processor speed, screen size/resolution, camera quality.

To be honest these things aren't really needed right now. A dual core 1Ghz processor should be ample to run a phone and any kind of apps that you throw at it. Any problems with performance can be put down to software/firemare. Screen sizes are already too big, we really don't need to be looking at that any more. Sure pixel density is nice to improve, but there really isn't much point without fixing all the other fucked up things first. And do we really need to be concentrating so much on improving camera quality?

All these things should be put behind looking at the 2 MAJOR issues with Android phones right now. The first is the absolute joke of software that runs on these thing. You shouldn't have to reboot a phone, you shouldn't have things "force close", you shoulnd't have to be told not to worry about task killers "because Android handles that for you" only to find out it doesn't. Seriously, stop with the processor/screen/camera useless R&D and fix what's already out there. If you get the software working properly you'll find these things perform just great as is!

Of course the second thing is battery life. But fixing the software should also assist with battery life. Simple things to fix, like it not raping your battery to death if you're out of range of a tower, "Android System" not using 50% of battery. Once these things have been fixed up, along with the improvements we should be getting by actually efficiently using the hardware, we should see battery improvements straight up, without needing any new battery capacity or technology. If you then combine this with the much needed R&D into this new technology, and methods for increasing capacity it will be possible to actually get great improvements.

The trouble is right now the manufacturers don't care about this. It's not a selling point, and when they do talk about it, they outright lie. No-one get's 300 hours standby time with an Android phone, sure you might be able to in a lab, with everything powered down and it not being used AT ALL, but as soon as you take it into the real world it doesn't happen. There needs to be a standardised battery test, which will take into account the usage across all radios, using all components, and having this independently tested and published. Only once we start seeing REAL number being published and advertised will we see a response from manufacturers to change and improve these numbers.

shavera · 3 months

While we're all speculating wildly, the cloud, man. Offload all the processor intense tasks to some other server somewhere and just pipe in the screen over a data connection. Your phone becomes a small thin-client terminal to some larger mainframe with your apps on it.

Yes I know there are problems with this, but it seems like the closest to a long term solution I can think of.

transformers3 · 3 months

Its all about the screen. efficient and light batteries are too expensive for mass market production. What we need are more energy efficient screens.

absolutsyd · 3 months

Seems to me that they are much more interested in making everything thinner. My infuse is freaking too thin without a case. I'd rather have it a few mm thicker with twice the battery life!

LarrySDonald · 3 months

In fairness, modern lithium batteries pack one hell of a punch compared to the old NiCd and lead/acid. They've advanced tremendously, it's just that they're not doing so at the pace people want more power at. They're currently one of the main "holdbacks".

DanielPhermous · 3 months

They already do get better. I suspect your question is, in fact, will batteries ever follow the same pace of Moore's Law.

And that's no. They do advance but it happens more slowly.

hellokitty · 3 months

You're not having a battery problem its a marketing problem.

Batteries have higher energy density than ever.

Processing power - Dual Core, eye blistering graphics.

and yet, what is the number one priority of cellphone design?

Thickness.

Bitch, Please.

vbf · 3 months

not until the consumer demands it. We keep buying the newest slimmer phones with crap battery life... its our fault.

thoomfish · 3 months

There's a limit to how much energy you can pack into a cell phone battery and not blow off your head when something goes wrong while taking a call.

Don't expect battery capacity to get too much better than it is today. Instead, expect charging to become faster, easier, and more available. If you could charge your phone in 10 seconds, it wouldn't really matter if the battery only lasted 3 hours at full bore.

Yeugwo · 3 months

Ive heard many consider 2011 "the year of the processor" in terms of mobile devices, as much progress was made there. Many also hope 2012 is "year of the battery"

Random_Illianer · 3 months

With the new Windows Phone devices hitting the market and doing very well on battery life, I think it will inspire Android to catch up. I have a HTC Radar 4G on T-Mobile, and it will last 2 days on extremely heavy usage.

Please don't make this a debate about smartphone platforms. I love my Galaxy S II also. My point is that Android does a good job at adapting to competitor's offerings.

strobeprobe · 3 months

on the other hand, you have a hand-held device that can go to space and back in seconds. give it some time.

thetinguy · 3 months

Will X ever get better?

yes.

Really_Likes_Nutella · 3 months

What I don't understand is why they don't just put bigger batteries in phones, I wouldn't mind my phone being bigger if its battery lasted longer.

Slapbox · 3 months

No. We've reached the theoretical limit for batteries it's all down hill from here... ಠ_ಠ

prunk · 3 months

Unfortunately battery technology just cannot be improved. It's the one area of technology that can never get better.

It feels like that but really we just make things that use energy faster at a better rate than we make lasting batteries.

you'll need to login or register to do that

create a new account

login