7 ms·

Israeli Startup Can Charge Your Phone in 1 Minute

57 points by ilghiro 12y ago

lotsofmangos 12y ago
"The BBC has been given an exclusive look at a new kind of battery charger that can recharge a modern smartphone in less time than it takes to boil a kettle." Unless I am missing something on Storedot's website, the BBC were actually shown a phone with an ultra-capacitor instead of a battery.
- agildehaus 12y ago
  From the video it just looks like a phony app that claims the battery is being charged.
kefka 12y ago
This just sounds like complete snake oil. When asked to explain, the spokesman says things like "we use new physics". That alone peaked my bullshit detector. Every battery tech I'm also aware of cannot handle high amperage charging without things like outgassing, battery seperation, heating effects, and explosions. Even the venerable NiFe battery has problems with high current charging. But this startup has beat it? [Citation needed]
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Yeah. Also, I'm pretty sure this was in the news half a year ago.
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  It isn't a charging technology for existing batteries, the BBC are doing very crappy reporting. It is an ultra-capacitor made of peptides instead of a battery.
  - kefka 12y ago
    I wouldn't doubt that the BBC is doing bad reporting. My concern is over using supercaps: their density is still very low compared to Li-ions on a volume basis. Also, I noticed they are using a Samsung phone. Last time I used a supercap in a project, I had to build a complex circuit that compensates for exponential voltage drop but outputs constant voltage and amperage. I want to know how they got around that issue as well.
    - raverbashing 12y ago
      Won't a boost converter solve this? It's probably a more complicated version, but the idea is the same.
      - kefka 12y ago
        It would. But like I said, they were using a Samsung S(something). There's no way, aside using a different mainboard, to make the phone have a charge rate of 5C or higher. That's just the details of the phone charging hardware. I would have believed it more if they used a MediaTek chip based phone. They could have hacked and modified those all they wanted.
- codeduck 12y ago
  Lithium Iron Phosphate cells can charge at a rate of up to 5C with no side effects - they're used in more expensive hand-tools and as primary power cells for electric radio control aircraft and helicopters. That said, smartphones don't use these batteries, and anyone who tried to put a couple of amperes into a standard lithium polymer battery is going to have an amusing experience.
  - tempodox 12y ago
    What exactly do you mean by “5C”?
    - codeduck 12y ago
      5 times the nominal rating of the battery - it's a term we throw around loosely in Radio Control, based on Elec.Eng terminology that is too complex for us laymen :) A 1000 milliamp/hour battery has a C rating of 1 i.e. 1 ampere/hour. So for a typical Lithium Polymer you'd charge this at at most 2 Amperes to prevent damage to the battery. A LiFePO4 could be safely charged at 5 Amperes, which drastically reduces the charge time - very useful if you're at a flying site and are charging packs in between flights to extend your flight time and make use of good weather.
      - desdiv 12y ago
        ampere/hour Minor correction: battery capacity is measured in ampere-hour, i.e. ampere * hour.
    - maccard 12y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_charger#Charge_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_charger#Charge_rate explains it pretty succintly
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - ricket 12y ago
    5C is still like 10-15min for a full charge -- and definitely does have side effects, it causes damage to the battery and will result in sagging voltages and lower capacity in just tens of charges. 5C is too high of a charge rate. I feel like you've mixed up LiFePO4 and LiPo. LiFe has low charge rates, lower energy density, lower voltage, and higher cost compared to LiPo. For R/C aircraft, it's typically used only for the receiver and servos of the really large helis/planes, because its lower voltage is tolerated by the servos whereas a LiPo needs a regulator to step down to 5-6V for driving servos. I can't speak for expensive hand tools, but "everyone" in the R/C community uses LiPo.
- tempodox 12y ago
  I have the same doubts. For entertainment reasons, I would be interested in the explosions you mentioned, but other than that I would prefer my battery to survive its first recharge, and many more after that. (Edit: Clarification)
  - ricket 12y ago
    It's not as entertaining than say a dynamite explosion, but here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixIOEPnsgbI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixIOEPnsgbI Gassing (or smoke, not sure which) starts around 15 sec. Plenty of results for 'LiPo explosion', 'overcharge lipo', etc. A LiPo fire is a chemical reaction, it cannot be extinguished by traditional fire extinguishers (i.e. smothering does not extinguish, it's creating its own fuel) -- you have to wait for the battery to burn out and then extinguish the remains on fire. Treat your batteries (and electronics with batteries in them) well, folks.
    - kefka 12y ago
      Back when I was taking inorganic chem in the university, if we dealt with any of the alkali metals, we had a bucket of sand in arms reach. That's the only thing that will save you.
- dogma1138 12y ago
  The technology seems to be viable, the team behind it is also not some garage citizen scientists but a quite established teams of researchers. Techcrhuch had some articles about them this year http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/07/storedots-bio-organic-battery-tech-can-charge-from-flat-to-full-in-30-seconds/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/07/storedots-bio-organic-batte...
- userbinator 12y ago
  Some EEs here have raised the same skepticism about the charging rate: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/storedot-super-fast-charging-batteries/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/storedot-super-fast-ch... There are specialist lipos used for RC planes/cars/boats that can handle 100C burst discharges but even those can't be charged at more than ~10-20C - and these cells have very high self-discharge and short cycle life, so they're quite unsuitable for mobile phones.
stewartbutler 12y ago
Maybe a nanopore/nanostructure battery[1,2]? They are touted to bring near-capacitor charge/discharge rates from fairly traditional chemistry. This specific application leaves a few questions, though: 1: What is the actual capacity of the battery demonstrated? If it has a high C but low capacity, this isn't really notable. The paper [1] indicates that total charge capacity is a function of how fast the battery is charged; what tradeoff are they making? 2: How many charge cycles is this battery capable of at those rates? 3: What thresholds are they putting in place for temperature, and are all the components of the phone rated for repeated thermal cycles to those levels and back to ambient? 4: What is the failure mode for this battery? Outgassing? What compounds are released in overcharge? [1] - http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v9/n12/abs/nnano.2014.247.html http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v9/n12/abs/nnano.2014.24... [2] - http://www.google.com/patents/US20060216603 http://www.google.com/patents/US20060216603
AndrewDucker 12y ago
I'm currently backing the Petalite: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/petalite-flux-15-minute-charging https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/petalite-flux-15-minute-c... Which sounds rather more believable, and like it might be useful this year. I can live with 15-minute charging, and it being an external battery.
- ricket 12y ago
  It's 100% believable, technology-wise. It's a 2600 mAh LiPo (or LiFePO4 or other similar lithium battery), and the charger charges it at about 4C == 10A. The tradeoff is that such high charge rate tends to damage the battery quicker (resulting in sagging voltages/lower capacity). I don't believe their claims that it will last 3 years of regular use, that it will have 1500 charge cycles, or that it has "novel battery chemistry". I'd give it up to a year, and even then you'd probably be experiencing much lower capacity by the end of the year, but that's my rough guess. I'm also a bit surprised that it's deemed safe for consumers and will be certified.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- bsaul 12y ago
  I guess any disruptiv startup not born in california or the US is unusual. That, plus the fact that israel, as a country, has made the choice of focusing 100% on high tech, so it's always interesting to know if/when that choice pays off.
  - k-mcgrady 12y ago
    >> "I guess any disruptiv startup not born in california or the US is unusual." Seriously? You really think disruptive startups made outside the US are unusual?
    - jeffreyrogers 12y ago
      I think that is a reasonable assumption given the data over the past century. I wouldn't view such a statement as a value judgement, but instead as a (possible) interpretation of the facts... The US has a disproportionate share of innovation relative to the rest of the world. Nassim Taleb (originally from Lebanon and educated in both the US and Europe) suggests that this is due to greater tolerance of failure in the US, as opposed to greater risk aversion on the part of other countries. Note: I'm not passing judgement either way, but I wanted to point out that the idea that the US is more innovative/disruptive is not at all an extreme claim and is in fact one made by many others.
    - bsaul 12y ago
      I do, yes. By unusual i mean statistically. Of course there are great innovative people everywhere, but it seems like the US managed to be exceptionnaly good at having the right combinination of top level university, venture capitalism, and market size, that enable groundbrealink technologies become successful commercialy.
      - k-mcgrady 12y ago
        I think it's your choice of word that's wrong. Silicon Valley obviously produces many more disruptive technologies than the rest of the world but that doesn't make it unusual to see something from another country disrupt. Silicon Valley is unusual in that everything is so concentrated allowing a high output. The rest of the world is NORMAL :) It's also important to remember a lot of the people doing great things in Silicon Valley aren't from the US.
newuser88273 12y ago
I used to have that technology on my first mobile phone, back in a previous millenium. It was called "spare battery".
- tempodox 12y ago
  I think the point to be made here is the short recharge time. Did your spare battery recharge in minutes?
  - newuser88273 12y ago
    No, but my pain point as a user is that I want a fully charged phone right now. I don't care that the spares sit in a charging station for an hour or two; that's an uninteresting detail of the implementation.
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  And then battery technology improved to the point where it became better for most people to have a slimmer, sturdier device without the user-swappable part and all the doors and connectors such a thing entails.
  - jeffreyrogers 12y ago
    I can't imagine it would be that hard to make the battery removable? (I don't know for sure, just pure speculation). At any rate, I'd expect at least some phone manufacturer to create a modern smart phone like that.
    - pron 12y ago
      The Samsung Galaxy has a removable battery.
    - ceejayoz 12y ago
      It's not hard, but it takes up more space than a permanently affixed battery (which doesn't need a user-facing battery bay, can be permanently wired in, etc.) and introduces moving parts (I recall having my battery cover open and the battery skitter across the floor whenever I'd drop my old flip phone). Apple has been moving in the same direction for laptops. http://ifixit.org/blog/2763/the-new-macbook-pro-unfixable-unhackable-untenable/ http://ifixit.org/blog/2763/the-new-macbook-pro-unfixable-un... https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/PTdAj6LheOiy2Vu1.medium https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/PTdAj6LheOiy2Vu1.m... shows 8 of the 16 RAM chips (the others are on the other side) in a Macbook Air. Having them soldered straight on the board means you can't replace 'em, but it also means they use a lot less space than a stick of RAM.
dogma1138 12y ago
From what i can understand the biological process is used to construct non-biological parts in this case very small semi-conducting crystals. The "battery" it self i would assume is some sort of a high density bank of MIS capacitors or any other semi-conductive capacitor. According to some of the more business oriented reporting about the product their current end goal for 2017 is a 100-150$ batter capable of 1500-2000 discharge cycles this means that if it will be put in a phone it will give you a life time of 3-4 years depending on your discharge rate. Their goals at least seem to be very realistic, even if the price will be a blocker even for most high end phone users. I do see this technology having many applications tho especially for military and emergency services. Considering that the US Army has trialed multiple Samsung phones so far with specialized software an "ultra battery" like this would be very appealing to them even if it will have a horrible life time and a very high price compared to commercial batteries. The Army can and will pay very high amounts if it means that the turn around for a soldier's computing package will be minutes instead of hours. The company so far raised 40-50 million $ and not via "kickstarter" some of the investors are rumored to be phone giants including Samsung, and in any case venture capitalist firms don't ten to put 50M on the table for snake oil.
- jeffreyrogers 12y ago
  > in any case venture capitalist firms don't ten to put 50M on the table for snake oil. You have a much higher view of VCs then I do then. I'm personally aware of a few tech companies that exist solely to siphon money from the investors to the founder. Rich people aren't always careful with their money, particularly when they are putting it into something hot, like tech, that they know nothing about.
sajal83 12y ago
No, it can't charge my phone in 1 Minute.

57 points by ilghiro 12y ago

"The BBC has been given an exclusive look at a new kind of battery charger that can recharge a modern smartphone in less time than it takes to boil a kettle." Unless I am missing something on Storedot's website, the BBC were actually shown a phone with an ultra-capacitor instead of a battery.

agildehaus 12y ago
From the video it just looks like a phony app that claims the battery is being charged.

kefka 12y ago

This just sounds like complete snake oil. When asked to explain, the spokesman says things like "we use new physics". That alone peaked my bullshit detector. Every battery tech I'm also aware of cannot handle high amperage charging without things like outgassing, battery seperation, heating effects, and explosions. Even the venerable NiFe battery has problems with high current charging. But this startup has beat it? [Citation needed]

TeMPOraL 12y ago
Yeah. Also, I'm pretty sure this was in the news half a year ago.
lotsofmangos 12y ago
It isn't a charging technology for existing batteries, the BBC are doing very crappy reporting. It is an ultra-capacitor made of peptides instead of a battery.
- kefka 12y ago
  I wouldn't doubt that the BBC is doing bad reporting. My concern is over using supercaps: their density is still very low compared to Li-ions on a volume basis. Also, I noticed they are using a Samsung phone. Last time I used a supercap in a project, I had to build a complex circuit that compensates for exponential voltage drop but outputs constant voltage and amperage. I want to know how they got around that issue as well.
  - raverbashing 12y ago
    Won't a boost converter solve this? It's probably a more complicated version, but the idea is the same.
    - kefka 12y ago
      It would. But like I said, they were using a Samsung S(something). There's no way, aside using a different mainboard, to make the phone have a charge rate of 5C or higher. That's just the details of the phone charging hardware. I would have believed it more if they used a MediaTek chip based phone. They could have hacked and modified those all they wanted.
codeduck 12y ago
Lithium Iron Phosphate cells can charge at a rate of up to 5C with no side effects - they're used in more expensive hand-tools and as primary power cells for electric radio control aircraft and helicopters. That said, smartphones don't use these batteries, and anyone who tried to put a couple of amperes into a standard lithium polymer battery is going to have an amusing experience.
- tempodox 12y ago
  What exactly do you mean by “5C”?
  - codeduck 12y ago
    5 times the nominal rating of the battery - it's a term we throw around loosely in Radio Control, based on Elec.Eng terminology that is too complex for us laymen :) A 1000 milliamp/hour battery has a C rating of 1 i.e. 1 ampere/hour. So for a typical Lithium Polymer you'd charge this at at most 2 Amperes to prevent damage to the battery. A LiFePO4 could be safely charged at 5 Amperes, which drastically reduces the charge time - very useful if you're at a flying site and are charging packs in between flights to extend your flight time and make use of good weather.
    - desdiv 12y ago
      ampere/hour Minor correction: battery capacity is measured in ampere-hour, i.e. ampere * hour.
  - maccard 12y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_charger#Charge_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_charger#Charge_rate explains it pretty succintly
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- ricket 12y ago
  5C is still like 10-15min for a full charge -- and definitely does have side effects, it causes damage to the battery and will result in sagging voltages and lower capacity in just tens of charges. 5C is too high of a charge rate. I feel like you've mixed up LiFePO4 and LiPo. LiFe has low charge rates, lower energy density, lower voltage, and higher cost compared to LiPo. For R/C aircraft, it's typically used only for the receiver and servos of the really large helis/planes, because its lower voltage is tolerated by the servos whereas a LiPo needs a regulator to step down to 5-6V for driving servos. I can't speak for expensive hand tools, but "everyone" in the R/C community uses LiPo.
tempodox 12y ago
I have the same doubts. For entertainment reasons, I would be interested in the explosions you mentioned, but other than that I would prefer my battery to survive its first recharge, and many more after that. (Edit: Clarification)
- ricket 12y ago
  It's not as entertaining than say a dynamite explosion, but here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixIOEPnsgbI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixIOEPnsgbI Gassing (or smoke, not sure which) starts around 15 sec. Plenty of results for 'LiPo explosion', 'overcharge lipo', etc. A LiPo fire is a chemical reaction, it cannot be extinguished by traditional fire extinguishers (i.e. smothering does not extinguish, it's creating its own fuel) -- you have to wait for the battery to burn out and then extinguish the remains on fire. Treat your batteries (and electronics with batteries in them) well, folks.
  - kefka 12y ago
    Back when I was taking inorganic chem in the university, if we dealt with any of the alkali metals, we had a bucket of sand in arms reach. That's the only thing that will save you.
dogma1138 12y ago
The technology seems to be viable, the team behind it is also not some garage citizen scientists but a quite established teams of researchers. Techcrhuch had some articles about them this year http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/07/storedots-bio-organic-battery-tech-can-charge-from-flat-to-full-in-30-seconds/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/07/storedots-bio-organic-batte...
userbinator 12y ago
Some EEs here have raised the same skepticism about the charging rate: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/storedot-super-fast-charging-batteries/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/storedot-super-fast-ch... There are specialist lipos used for RC planes/cars/boats that can handle 100C burst discharges but even those can't be charged at more than ~10-20C - and these cells have very high self-discharge and short cycle life, so they're quite unsuitable for mobile phones.

stewartbutler 12y ago

Maybe a nanopore/nanostructure battery[1,2]? They are touted to bring near-capacitor charge/discharge rates from fairly traditional chemistry. This specific application leaves a few questions, though: 1: What is the actual capacity of the battery demonstrated? If it has a high C but low capacity, this isn't really notable. The paper [1] indicates that total charge capacity is a function of how fast the battery is charged; what tradeoff are they making? 2: How many charge cycles is this battery capable of at those rates? 3: What thresholds are they putting in place for temperature, and are all the components of the phone rated for repeated thermal cycles to those levels and back to ambient? 4: What is the failure mode for this battery? Outgassing? What compounds are released in overcharge? [1] - http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v9/n12/abs/nnano.2014.247.html http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v9/n12/abs/nnano.2014.24... [2] - http://www.google.com/patents/US20060216603 http://www.google.com/patents/US20060216603

AndrewDucker 12y ago

I'm currently backing the Petalite: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/petalite-flux-15-minute-charging https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/petalite-flux-15-minute-c... Which sounds rather more believable, and like it might be useful this year. I can live with 15-minute charging, and it being an external battery.

ricket 12y ago
It's 100% believable, technology-wise. It's a 2600 mAh LiPo (or LiFePO4 or other similar lithium battery), and the charger charges it at about 4C == 10A. The tradeoff is that such high charge rate tends to damage the battery quicker (resulting in sagging voltages/lower capacity). I don't believe their claims that it will last 3 years of regular use, that it will have 1500 charge cycles, or that it has "novel battery chemistry". I'd give it up to a year, and even then you'd probably be experiencing much lower capacity by the end of the year, but that's my rough guess. I'm also a bit surprised that it's deemed safe for consumers and will be certified.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

bsaul 12y ago
I guess any disruptiv startup not born in california or the US is unusual. That, plus the fact that israel, as a country, has made the choice of focusing 100% on high tech, so it's always interesting to know if/when that choice pays off.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  >> "I guess any disruptiv startup not born in california or the US is unusual." Seriously? You really think disruptive startups made outside the US are unusual?
  - jeffreyrogers 12y ago
    I think that is a reasonable assumption given the data over the past century. I wouldn't view such a statement as a value judgement, but instead as a (possible) interpretation of the facts... The US has a disproportionate share of innovation relative to the rest of the world. Nassim Taleb (originally from Lebanon and educated in both the US and Europe) suggests that this is due to greater tolerance of failure in the US, as opposed to greater risk aversion on the part of other countries. Note: I'm not passing judgement either way, but I wanted to point out that the idea that the US is more innovative/disruptive is not at all an extreme claim and is in fact one made by many others.
  - bsaul 12y ago
    I do, yes. By unusual i mean statistically. Of course there are great innovative people everywhere, but it seems like the US managed to be exceptionnaly good at having the right combinination of top level university, venture capitalism, and market size, that enable groundbrealink technologies become successful commercialy.
    - k-mcgrady 12y ago
      I think it's your choice of word that's wrong. Silicon Valley obviously produces many more disruptive technologies than the rest of the world but that doesn't make it unusual to see something from another country disrupt. Silicon Valley is unusual in that everything is so concentrated allowing a high output. The rest of the world is NORMAL :) It's also important to remember a lot of the people doing great things in Silicon Valley aren't from the US.

newuser88273 12y ago

I used to have that technology on my first mobile phone, back in a previous millenium. It was called "spare battery".

tempodox 12y ago
I think the point to be made here is the short recharge time. Did your spare battery recharge in minutes?
- newuser88273 12y ago
  No, but my pain point as a user is that I want a fully charged phone right now. I don't care that the spares sit in a charging station for an hour or two; that's an uninteresting detail of the implementation.
ceejayoz 12y ago
And then battery technology improved to the point where it became better for most people to have a slimmer, sturdier device without the user-swappable part and all the doors and connectors such a thing entails.
- jeffreyrogers 12y ago
  I can't imagine it would be that hard to make the battery removable? (I don't know for sure, just pure speculation). At any rate, I'd expect at least some phone manufacturer to create a modern smart phone like that.
  - pron 12y ago
    The Samsung Galaxy has a removable battery.
  - ceejayoz 12y ago
    It's not hard, but it takes up more space than a permanently affixed battery (which doesn't need a user-facing battery bay, can be permanently wired in, etc.) and introduces moving parts (I recall having my battery cover open and the battery skitter across the floor whenever I'd drop my old flip phone). Apple has been moving in the same direction for laptops. http://ifixit.org/blog/2763/the-new-macbook-pro-unfixable-unhackable-untenable/ http://ifixit.org/blog/2763/the-new-macbook-pro-unfixable-un... https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/PTdAj6LheOiy2Vu1.medium https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/PTdAj6LheOiy2Vu1.m... shows 8 of the 16 RAM chips (the others are on the other side) in a Macbook Air. Having them soldered straight on the board means you can't replace 'em, but it also means they use a lot less space than a stick of RAM.

dogma1138 12y ago

From what i can understand the biological process is used to construct non-biological parts in this case very small semi-conducting crystals. The "battery" it self i would assume is some sort of a high density bank of MIS capacitors or any other semi-conductive capacitor. According to some of the more business oriented reporting about the product their current end goal for 2017 is a 100-150$ batter capable of 1500-2000 discharge cycles this means that if it will be put in a phone it will give you a life time of 3-4 years depending on your discharge rate. Their goals at least seem to be very realistic, even if the price will be a blocker even for most high end phone users. I do see this technology having many applications tho especially for military and emergency services. Considering that the US Army has trialed multiple Samsung phones so far with specialized software an "ultra battery" like this would be very appealing to them even if it will have a horrible life time and a very high price compared to commercial batteries. The Army can and will pay very high amounts if it means that the turn around for a soldier's computing package will be minutes instead of hours. The company so far raised 40-50 million $ and not via "kickstarter" some of the investors are rumored to be phone giants including Samsung, and in any case venture capitalist firms don't ten to put 50M on the table for snake oil.

jeffreyrogers 12y ago
> in any case venture capitalist firms don't ten to put 50M on the table for snake oil. You have a much higher view of VCs then I do then. I'm personally aware of a few tech companies that exist solely to siphon money from the investors to the founder. Rich people aren't always careful with their money, particularly when they are putting it into something hot, like tech, that they know nothing about.

sajal83 12y ago

No, it can't charge my phone in 1 Minute.