4 ms·
4) do the two screens wear uniformly? 5) what effect does putting a hinge in the center of the device have on the thermal capacity of the unit (thermal capacit
by esmi 8y ago
4) do the two screens wear uniformly?
5) what effect does putting a hinge in the center of the device have on the thermal capacity of the unit (thermal capacity is almost more important for performace than ram on a modern mobile computer architectures)
6) what are the long term ramifications of splitting the battery cell into two halves. It must be less capacity due to the extra packaging and safety overhead.
I could go on.
It’s certainly not clear to me that having a mode which trades XY for Z is a win.
But it’s an interesting experiment. It will be entertaining to watch.
- mikeash 8y agoI don’t think dividing up the battery is a big problem. You’re right that there’s some additional overhead from more packaging, but it’s not horrible. Consider Tesla batteries, which consist of thousands of cells. They are heavier and bigger than they could be (and indeed, their newer ones use somewhat fewer, larger cells for this reason) but it’s ok. Phones are more weight sensitive than cars, but a two-piece battery is also not very extreme.
- esmi 8y agoI don’t think I was totally clear. I agree if one takes a cell and cuts it in half then the overhead of managing the two cells isn’t hugely significant but I think what happened here is volume which could’ve been cell became hinge and that loss of capacity could prove to be an architectural disadvantage.
- Rebelgecko 8y agoThere could be some benefits. I wouldn't be surprised if separating the battery in 2 actually helped with some of the thermal characteristics and reduced battery aging
- esmi 8y agoIt’s unlikely that it reduces aging. It’s probably worse but it is possible to have no impact depending on how they did it. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378775316309995 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037877531...
- pizza 8y agoI hope for Samsung's sake that there isn't some freak failure mode with the folding mechanism that makes it more likely for the battery to explode
- nickelcitymario 8y agoI may have missed it, but do we know the battery is split in 2? Personally, I would make one half of the device be 100% battery, and the other half hold all of the remaining components. I'm not sure what the effect of that would be in terms of weight balancing, though. I'm not a hardware guy. I wouldn't be surprised if this led to the battery half being significantly heavier and feeling more substantial. Still, seems like there are options beyond splitting the battery in half. Solid points otherwise, though. Could you imagine have the screen wearing out faster than the other? That'd be a nightmare to look at.