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The biggest winner of this, should it come to fruition, would seem to be electric vehicles. Electronic devices would surely prosper, but further miniaturizatio
by redthrowaway 16y ago
The biggest winner of this, should it come to fruition, would seem to be electric vehicles. Electronic devices would surely prosper, but further miniaturization of smartphones doesn't really seem desirable, so it would go towards increased computational power and battery life. EVs, on the other hand, derive a double benefit: By shrinking the battery, you reduce weight, which increases range and efficiency, which reduces the requisite battery size, etc. The end product would be much cheaper and much more efficient. Having an economical EV that could get 1000 miles to a charge for the price of a Civic would be huge.
- InclinedPlane 16y agoBattery life in smartphones is rather marginal today. With light to moderate use it's still necessary to charge smartphones every day and there's no guarantee that your battery won't run out. Changing that equation such that average battery life is on the scale of weeks instead of a day or hours is quite significant, enabling people to use smartphones in new ways they would not have before. But yes, electric vehicles are definitely the most in need of higher energy density batteries.
- sliverstorm 16y agoahem My Nokia regularly goes a week without a charge with light usage. (I've heard tell the power management in the Symbian kernel far outstrips the competitors, which probably explains it.)
- barrkel 16y agoIt depends on how much or little the phone is doing, doesn't it. How much of that time is it connected to wifi? How much data transferred? How many background apps are you running? Do they use location services, orientation sensors, light sensors, etc.? What size is the screen, and what is its power output? Etc.
- sliverstorm 16y agoIt's true, I put it through pretty light usage, with a meg or two data over wifi a day, a few texts and calls. Still gets 2x the life of any other phone I've ever had my hands on though, no matter how light I used them.
- metageek 16y agoWhich model? I have to charge my N86 every night; and sometimes in the middle of the day if I want to use the wifi hotspot.
- sliverstorm 16y agoIt's an E72
- Qz 16y agoMy Droid Incredible lasts 2-4 days on 'light use'
- sjs 16y agoGuys, let's not get hung up on how many days you get with light use and that you already get more than a day. InclinedPlane's point stands whether you get 1/2 a day or 4 days out of your battery with light-ish usage. Hell, I can get 2-3 days out my iPhone if I don't use it much. It's not good enough until we can get at least 24 solid hours of use out of a modern phone with a big display (>= 3") while using at least one or two of the radios inside it (e.g. 3g and bluetooth).
- alex_c 16y ago>Changing that equation such that average battery life is on the scale of weeks instead of a day or hours is quite significant, enabling people to use smartphones in new ways they would not have before. At which point battery life will promptly drop back down to a couple of days.
- s3graham 16y agoAre you sure that the "smaller" batteries are lighter? It seems like they might be the same factor more dense also.
- redthrowaway 16y agoThat's a good question. I simply don't know enough about Li batteries to answer it. I would think that nanoscale electroplating, as this effectively does, wouldn't add huge amounts of weight over current methods, in relation to surface area, but I could be grossly mistaken.