7 ms·

Charge Your Phone in 30 Seconds? An Israeli Firm Says It Can

46 points by shawndumas 13y ago

shawndumas 13y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9DhJZAhjbcI https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9DhJ...
grej 13y ago
I wonder if this has any effect the number of cycles the battery can handle. If this is real, the implications for electric cars are most intriguing. Fill up with electricity becomes as fast as a fill up with liquid hydrocarbon.
- JimmaDaRustla 13y ago
  Batteries degrade with heat. Heat is generated by rapidly discharging or charging a battery. This would destroy batteries - wouldn't suggest this at all unless you only want your battery to last a year. Edit: Some resource - http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/ultra_fast_chargers http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/ultra_fast_charge...
  - corin_ 13y ago
    As long as it's not a device with a non-removable battery (such as iPhone), I'd be fine with that. If I could recharge my blackberry in 30 seconds I'd have no problem buying a new battery every 6 months.
    - amalag 13y ago
      Then it comes down to the monetary and environmental cost of the replacements.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      Reasonable for a phone with a $30 battery, less reasonable for an electric car with a $30,000 battery.
bertil 13y ago
I’m not sure I understand the science behind that: they insist on showing a actual phone, running normally, therefore I’m assuming that means the battery isn’t different, right? The WSJ article doesn’t exactly give much details. That thing is fed with standards copper-wires that can handle current, that can be of a certain voltage and amperage -- both are presumably linked. You can do funky things with time, like alternating, but… other than shove with higher voltage, I don’t see how you can feed that much energy in there, not unless you change the battery technology. And that’s not possible. Therefore, what they have and the big bulky thing is a prototype battery. IT is an order of magnitude too big for the moment — not really a problem until you go though industrial design, I’m guessing. One that appears not to heat as much, otherwise that think would be burning when holding. My question is: why do we have to guess so much from a video?
beat 13y ago
If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Consider internal resistance, power measured in watt-hours, and thermal behavior. When I was a kid, I grew around drag racing. Lots of times, I saw incredibly powerful cars try to put over 1000hp to the wheels at once, and just snap an axle or explode a transmission. An iPhone battery is about 5.45 watt-hours. To charge that in 30 seconds from mostly dead (say 5 watt-hours), you need over 500 watts, discounting any thermal losses! Do you think the tiny solder joints at the power coupling are really designed to take 500 watts of power? Devices designed for 500 watts of power look more like your refrigerator.
- roeme 13y ago
  ^ This. I'm wondering how this article, lacking substantial tech info, even made it here.
  - Shivetya 13y ago
    because on many sites an article like the above coming from WSJ is considered safe. Oh they get taken on occasion, but far less than sites whose only specialty is technology.
- tkinom 13y ago
  Typical toaster, coffee pot are ~800-1500 watts according to google. Pumping 500 watts into the phone might be possible as long as it is not via the normal usb connector. How long would that batter last might be different story. https://www.google.com/search?q=toaster+wattage&client=ubuntu&channel=cs&oq=toaster+wattage https://www.google.com/search?q=toaster+wattage&client=ubunt...
  - beat 13y ago
    1000 watts into a heater element is a very different thing from 1000 watts into delicate microcircuitry.
    - gatehouse 13y ago
theDoug 13y ago
“Can” and “does” are two very different things.
ihnorton 13y ago
The other article has at least some content: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7546332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7546332
tzs 13y ago
They don't mean charge a phone that has a lithium ion battery. They mean charge a phone that has one of their batteries, which is similar to a super-capacitor.
acd 13y ago
This is revolutionary!, its seems similar to the super supercapacitor video https://vimeo.com/51873011 https://vimeo.com/51873011 This should have implications for car batteries as well. Tesla is essentially a car running on very many laptop batteries. Thus if you can charge a phone in 30 seconds. You can probably charge a car with distributed battery modules in similar speedy time frame. This will mean pollution free cities in the long run, clean cars powered by Thorium reactors. Imagine mega cities without the car pollution. Shorter time frame, your laptop should be able to fully recharge 50 watt hours in 300 seconds with this type of battery.
miahi 13y ago
>The prototype charger is currently the size of a laptop charger That's not the charger, that's the battery attached to the phone. A Li-Ion would blow to pieces charging at 120C (120 times the capacity). So what's wrong: - that's the battery - they don't actually say the battery capacity (the phone would report 100% charge even with a 100mAh battery, if it's "fully charged"). - they don't say anything else about the battery (weight, internal resistance) - the current provided by that plug they connect to the battery can probably be used to weld thin metal, if the battery capacity is close to the original one (think sparks/small fires in an accidental short circuit)
hosh 13y ago
Charging phones are great. Are there any applications for this for helping with stuff like buffering power generated by solar and wind? Anyone?
- hosh 13y ago
  Ok. Folks who downvoted, tell me why you did. I thought this was a relevant question.
aioprisan 13y ago
the video was posted for April fool's, wasn't it?
MimiZ 13y ago
Seriously, at the end they said "late 2016" for commercial production? Press release 2.5 years early.
TrainedMonkey 13y ago
Without knowing capacity of the battery this demo is useless. Charge time of lithium ion batteries already depends on capacity, so if you have low enough capacity you could achieve 30 second charge time.

46 points by shawndumas 13y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9DhJZAhjbcI https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9DhJ...

grej 13y ago

I wonder if this has any effect the number of cycles the battery can handle. If this is real, the implications for electric cars are most intriguing. Fill up with electricity becomes as fast as a fill up with liquid hydrocarbon.

JimmaDaRustla 13y ago
Batteries degrade with heat. Heat is generated by rapidly discharging or charging a battery. This would destroy batteries - wouldn't suggest this at all unless you only want your battery to last a year. Edit: Some resource - http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/ultra_fast_chargers http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/ultra_fast_charge...
- corin_ 13y ago
  As long as it's not a device with a non-removable battery (such as iPhone), I'd be fine with that. If I could recharge my blackberry in 30 seconds I'd have no problem buying a new battery every 6 months.
  - amalag 13y ago
    Then it comes down to the monetary and environmental cost of the replacements.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Reasonable for a phone with a $30 battery, less reasonable for an electric car with a $30,000 battery.

bertil 13y ago

I’m not sure I understand the science behind that: they insist on showing a actual phone, running normally, therefore I’m assuming that means the battery isn’t different, right? The WSJ article doesn’t exactly give much details. That thing is fed with standards copper-wires that can handle current, that can be of a certain voltage and amperage -- both are presumably linked. You can do funky things with time, like alternating, but… other than shove with higher voltage, I don’t see how you can feed that much energy in there, not unless you change the battery technology. And that’s not possible. Therefore, what they have and the big bulky thing is a prototype battery. IT is an order of magnitude too big for the moment — not really a problem until you go though industrial design, I’m guessing. One that appears not to heat as much, otherwise that think would be burning when holding. My question is: why do we have to guess so much from a video?

beat 13y ago

If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Consider internal resistance, power measured in watt-hours, and thermal behavior. When I was a kid, I grew around drag racing. Lots of times, I saw incredibly powerful cars try to put over 1000hp to the wheels at once, and just snap an axle or explode a transmission. An iPhone battery is about 5.45 watt-hours. To charge that in 30 seconds from mostly dead (say 5 watt-hours), you need over 500 watts, discounting any thermal losses! Do you think the tiny solder joints at the power coupling are really designed to take 500 watts of power? Devices designed for 500 watts of power look more like your refrigerator.

roeme 13y ago
^ This. I'm wondering how this article, lacking substantial tech info, even made it here.
- Shivetya 13y ago
  because on many sites an article like the above coming from WSJ is considered safe. Oh they get taken on occasion, but far less than sites whose only specialty is technology.
tkinom 13y ago
Typical toaster, coffee pot are ~800-1500 watts according to google. Pumping 500 watts into the phone might be possible as long as it is not via the normal usb connector. How long would that batter last might be different story. https://www.google.com/search?q=toaster+wattage&client=ubuntu&channel=cs&oq=toaster+wattage https://www.google.com/search?q=toaster+wattage&client=ubunt...
- beat 13y ago
  1000 watts into a heater element is a very different thing from 1000 watts into delicate microcircuitry.
  - gatehouse 13y ago

theDoug 13y ago

“Can” and “does” are two very different things.

ihnorton 13y ago

The other article has at least some content: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7546332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7546332

tzs 13y ago

They don't mean charge a phone that has a lithium ion battery. They mean charge a phone that has one of their batteries, which is similar to a super-capacitor.

acd 13y ago

This is revolutionary!, its seems similar to the super supercapacitor video https://vimeo.com/51873011 https://vimeo.com/51873011 This should have implications for car batteries as well. Tesla is essentially a car running on very many laptop batteries. Thus if you can charge a phone in 30 seconds. You can probably charge a car with distributed battery modules in similar speedy time frame. This will mean pollution free cities in the long run, clean cars powered by Thorium reactors. Imagine mega cities without the car pollution. Shorter time frame, your laptop should be able to fully recharge 50 watt hours in 300 seconds with this type of battery.

miahi 13y ago

>The prototype charger is currently the size of a laptop charger That's not the charger, that's the battery attached to the phone. A Li-Ion would blow to pieces charging at 120C (120 times the capacity). So what's wrong: - that's the battery - they don't actually say the battery capacity (the phone would report 100% charge even with a 100mAh battery, if it's "fully charged"). - they don't say anything else about the battery (weight, internal resistance) - the current provided by that plug they connect to the battery can probably be used to weld thin metal, if the battery capacity is close to the original one (think sparks/small fires in an accidental short circuit)

hosh 13y ago

Charging phones are great. Are there any applications for this for helping with stuff like buffering power generated by solar and wind? Anyone?

hosh 13y ago
Ok. Folks who downvoted, tell me why you did. I thought this was a relevant question.

aioprisan 13y ago

the video was posted for April fool's, wasn't it?

MimiZ 13y ago

Seriously, at the end they said "late 2016" for commercial production? Press release 2.5 years early.

TrainedMonkey 13y ago

Without knowing capacity of the battery this demo is useless. Charge time of lithium ion batteries already depends on capacity, so if you have low enough capacity you could achieve 30 second charge time.