Most people's primary experience of lithium-ion batteries is in their mobile phone. From that point of view, they were already cheap and commonplace at ~the tur

Most people's primary experience of lithium-ion batteries is in their mobile phone. From that point of view, they were already cheap and commonplace at ~the turn of the millennium. Most people's perception is that in the last 18 years they've got substantially worse. Obviously, the power and capability of the phone has gone up dramatically, but it's pretty obvious where the perception has come from. I'd think the secondary experience is in laptop batteries, and I'd hazard a guess that there's a similar but less extreme story: perception is similar battery life (perhaps because most life extensions come from low-power modes, so anyone actually using their laptop doesn't reach the claimed numbers for modern laptops?). Of course, a third major factor is that people tend not to notice incremental improvements as much as step changes, and tend not to "upgrade their battery" in a comparable way. All told, in relative terms there's probably some truth to it; other technology has progressed faster. But I wholeheartedly agree things have got better.