10 ms·

Forget Wearable Tech. People Really Want Better Batteries

81 points by frostmatthew 12y ago

k-mcgrady 12y ago
If Apple announced the next iPhone and it had a battery that lasted twice as long as the current one I think a lot of people would be happy. I've noticed I get about 1.5 days now with my iPhone 6 and not having to worry if I forget to charge it at night is great. If it could get me to the end of the next day it would be perfect. It seems that every year phone manufacturers make battery improvements but these are offset by the new sensors and screens. If they skipped everything except battery for one generation, doubled it, and then went back to features would they be able to continue adding features at the previous rate while maintaining the new battery life?
- marknutter 12y ago
  But what if you forget to charge it at the end of the second day? Maybe what you need isn't a better battery but something that reminds you to charge your phone at night?
  - k-mcgrady 12y ago
    The point is more - "I can't get to a charger tonight but I don't need to worry as it'll last until tomorrow night." Charging each night isn't an inconvenience for most people and they would probably continue doing that (nobody waits until 0% to charge) but it provides extra breathing room on the occasions it's just not possible for you to charge.
bpodgursky 12y ago
If phone manufacturers weren't in a constant race to cut the last .1 oz off of their phones while still being barely-sufficient to get through a day, this wouldn't even be an issue. I'd be happy to double my phone's weight for 3 days of life.
- jarcane 12y ago
  My last two phones I've bought deliberately bigger and bulkier in part because they had bigger battery capacities as a result (EVO 4G and Lumia 1320). I'd rather have a phone that can survive if I miss a night of charge.
- jcfrei 12y ago
  For most manufacturers and models battery life has actually increased marginally with each model (one notable exception being LG's G2 vs G3). See for example: http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/mobile-phones/1402071/best-battery-life-2014-60-smartphones-tested http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/mobile-phones/1402071/best-ba...
dorfsmay 12y ago
True. I'm one of those people who religiously plug my phone every night, yet, I often ran out of power when I really needed it (eg: browsing / tethering on a long train trip). I recently got a One plus one, and I really couldn't tell you all the good geeky spec, I actually don't care about all it's little flaws, but I loves the amazing battery life. I will not buy another phone with lesser battery life. There is no other geeky spec that can trump that.
vinceguidry 12y ago
The company that wins the jackpot on this isn't going to be the one with the most advanced batteries. It's going to be the company that figures out how to cut platform bloat down to a reasonable size, reducing energy consumption by an order of magnitude. They're also going to have to figure out ways to keep third-party apps from undoing their hard work.
- diego_moita 12y ago
  > It's going to be the company that figures out how to cut platform bloat down to a reasonable size, reducing energy consumption by an order of magnitude. I'd say there is evidence for your argument; there is one company trying to play that game on the smartwatch industry: Pebble. Their watches can run for a much longer time than the competition because they took your approach: lean and basic. And they've been doing well, holding on against very strong contenders (Google, Asus, Samsung, LG). My Android Wear watch (LG watch) typically runs for 1-2 days with a battery charge. I can get my Pebble running for even 17 days. It is very far from perfect, but for me is the minimum acceptable.
- mikeash 12y ago
  That only gets you so far. You can extend your standby time enormously that way, but people want to actually use their devices. I don't see a way to attain an order of magnitude improvement on the energy consumption of web browsing just by cutting bloat. Ultimately you still have to emit lots of photons to communicate with the user and the network.
  - wampus 12y ago
    My wife just discovered that if she puts her phone in airplane mode when playing solitaire it doesn't overheat and her battery lasts longer. This app should be the poster boy for being lightweight and efficient, but is instead used to showcase an advertising network. Who is the actual user here? Everything that doesn't improve the experience of playing solitaire is bloat in this case. There are countless more examples.
- kalleboo 12y ago
shocks 12y ago
I got an LG G3 recently and the battery life is excellent. It'll happily last two days.
- listic 12y ago
  That's not what I would call great, but that's a start. I believe hardware manufacturers still don't take energy saving as serious as they should.
- jordanpg 12y ago
  An LG G3 with the auto brightness feature enabled, maybe. With brightness bumped up to a more user friendly level, my battery lasts <<1 day. I like this phone, but consider the battery life to be laughably bad.
  - shocks 12y ago
    I don't use auto brightness. I have it set to 50% pretty much all the time.
meesterdude 12y ago
I would welcome some additional thickness in my iphone for a better battery life. The end goal should not be a paperthin phone; it should be a phone that has a long charge time and fits reasonably into your pocket / hand. Phones are pretty important to people and it's silly something so important is so needy of recharging. It's not technology so much that is the problem, it is design principles and priorities.
- ekianjo 12y ago
  I agree but there are issues with having bigger batteries as well: they add a lot of weight and could result in more wrist/arm pain for those using their phones for extended time. You certainly don't want your phone to be as heavy as a brick.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >* they add a lot of weight and could result in more wrist/arm pain for those using their phones for extended time.* Seriously? I think we somehow survived the nineties, early '00s without such issues. >* You certainly don't want your phone to be as heavy as a brick.* It's been at least 5-10 years that we've been very far away from that situation...
    - ekianjo 12y ago
      > Seriously? I think we somehow survived the nineties, early '00s without such issues. Smartphones were not mainstream in the early '00s. All the "normal" phones were very light and very portable.
      - jacquesm 12y ago
        For about 100 years or so the handset was a lot heavier than todays smartphones and nobody thought anything of it. My grandmom had one of those old black bakelite jobs, it must have weighed at least 2 pounds and could be used as a means of self defense.
acd 12y ago
I think wearable watches has to be designed differently. Think a watch bracelet with the battery around the arm, also add solar cells to recharge that battery.
- ansgri 12y ago
  Remember those non-automatic mechanical watches? 2-5 days on a single charge was normal. Wireless charge + 2 days battery life is perfectly ok for most cases. OTOH, even mechanical watches can auto-recharge now, why not autorecharge smart watches?
- Retra 12y ago
  I am very happy with smartphones. Mostly because having one means I don't have to wear a watch.
  - mod 12y ago
    I'd be very happy if my watch could take over the majority of my phone's functions--calling, texting. Mostly because then I wouldn't have to carry a phone in my pocket.
    - Retra 12y ago
      Just attach a chain to your smartphone and call it a "smartpocketwatch."
userbinator 12y ago
Also related: easily removable batteries, and preferably in standardised sizes. The fastest way to get from empty to full is not to wait for it charge, but to swap in an already-charged battery. I think thinness is overrated too, as a device thinner than ~10mm starts getting rather difficult to pick up from a flat surface and hold comfortably (I have big hands.)
- comrade1 12y ago
  I read the (short) article and didn't see anything about people wanting removable batteries. For myself, I'd rather have a long-lasting integrated battery than a removable battery. For example, my current laptop (recent macbook pro) with its integrated battery lets me work the entire flight from SFO/LAX to AMS/CDG (10 hours). Whereas my previous laptop would make me change the battery just to go from BOS to SFO (6 hours) and even then I was running out of charge on the second battery. Does anyone know why the integrated batteries aren't more form-fitting? If you could have the battery fill all of the empty spaces you could probably get even better charge. Are 'pourable' batteries possible?
  - mschuster91 12y ago
    > Does anyone know why the integrated batteries aren't more form-fitting? If you could have the battery fill all of the empty spaces you could probably get even better charge. Yeah, LiPo batteries are quite flexible, but the problem is that you have to balance multiple different-sized subcells when trying to fit battery in every cubic inch of space in your laptop.
- adamgravitis 12y ago
  I massively disagree with the importance of swappable batteries. While I suppose there are people who are pretty happy hauling around a bunch of batteries with them, I haven't considered such a thing since camcorders were cool. A big part of keeping technology mainstream is to not require a utility belt. (n.b. I don't mind if they're user-removable for replacement once they've totally died, but this also seems to have become rather rare for what I assume are manufacturing reasons)
jokoon 12y ago
other alternative, just make slower hardware, and optimize the software running on it. optimizing and reducing the amount of functionalities might also save a very big amount of battery. Honestly, what I'd buy, is a * 4 inch e-ink screen device * that can close like a laptop, with a physical keyboard, * with a CPU that sacrifice features and speed for less power consumption * no camera, * only wifi, or with 3G disabled by default, no phone function * browser with a very limited set of feature: limited to css 2, js deactivated by default: it's amazing the amount of firefox modules that can be disabled: http://sourceforge.net/projects/lightfirefox/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/lightfirefox/ * no video acceleration, no graphics acceleration, and no fading/smooth window transitions, 10hz refresh rate is more than enough to read text I wonder which of those things save the most battery, but I guess all of this would easily double battery life. Also I guess that device would cost much less and be very attractive for students, and be enough to just code if you'd have an online compiler. If you want calls, just buy a candybar phone, like the the latest nokia 100 or 200 series. I'd buy it even if it cost $300. I wonder how expensive e-ink screen are, but I would not be surprised it's mostly a patent issue.
- marknutter 12y ago
  Take everything away from the computer that makes the average person excited about using the computer?
  - jokoon 12y ago
    You mean like a nintendo DS or a Sony PSP. A computer doesn't need to have bells and whistles to be functional.
- cuu508 12y ago
  May I suggest you to use typewriter? It runs without batteries, and is about as useful, you can write on it.
- kalleboo 12y ago
  っ http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/2005-04-16_Psion_Serie_5mx_PRO_24MB_beschn_unscharf_scharf.JPG http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/2005-04-1...
Kiro 12y ago
So I must choose? Wearable tech or better batteries but you can't have both! Of course people want better batteries but I don't see how that leads to the conclusion of the headline.
cheatdeath 12y ago
Is there some sort of Parkinson's Law that phones will consume as much power as is available to them?
mikeash 12y ago
It's really interesting how much improved batteries could improve all sorts of tech. Phones and wearables are pretty much the least interesting of them, too. Imagine for a moment that batteries are 1000x better than now. A ton of problems are magically solved. Renewable energy is suddenly trivial. Run the world on solar and wind, done! Electric cars are now the only reasonable kind. Trucks and trains too. Even airplanes. Many satellites could be replaced with long-duration drones. Those that remain can be built lighter and cheaper. Supersonic airliners might even come back, since fuel costs would drop through the floor. Oh, and your smartphone could run for three years on a charge. Woohoo. Compare with something like fusion power, which only solves a tiny fraction of the above. Without storage, fusion isn't that interesting. With good storage, it's not necessary!
- noir_lord 12y ago
  Yup, Generation is the 'easiest' part of the equation and has been since we had reliable nuclear power the issue is distribution via batteries. If you look at the energy density of gasoline vs a battery for the same weight it, Petrol (Gasoline) 44MJ/Kg, Li-Ion batteries (the best ones, 0.875MJ/Kg). Obviously there are conversion efficiencies to take into account (ICE's have a lower conversion efficiencies than Electric Drive). 1000x wouldn't be required, 10x would revolutionize many fields and 100x would be incredible.
marknutter 12y ago
What percentage of people don't/can't charge their phone every night? And of those who don't/can't, what percentage of them aren't satisfied with the myriad external battery cases and on-the-go-chargers available for smart phones. I challenge the assumption that the majority of people are asking for better batteries. I think it's like people asking Ford for a faster horse.
- adamgravitis 12y ago
  I'm not sure it's a perfect analogy. People might ask Ford to go faster, people are asking technology to let them work longer before it dies. I think the sentiment is pretty clear: this doesn't mean we need better Li-ion batteries per se, but either we need hugely longer-lasting sources of power, or we need hugely more efficient displays/radios/processors.
- kalleboo 12y ago
  For me it's not the end of the world, just an annoyance. Why am I carrying around a spare battery and charging cable just so my phone can be 2mm thinner?
  - marknutter 12y ago
    But you can literally buy cases today that add additional thickness and provide extra battery capacity. Have you bought one, and if not, why? Perhaps you like your thin phone after all?
    - kalleboo 12y ago
      The battery cases waste way too much space with all the extra layers of plastic, redundant charging circuits and ports. External batteries are still more space-efficient (and yes I do carry them, every day). I would absolutely buy something like the Motorola Maxx if work didn't require me to use iOS.
      - marknutter 12y ago
jacquesm 12y ago
This is one of the main reasons I still don't have a smartphone. Battery life on an old Nokia is well in excess of 5 days, it works whenever I need it when on the road even when there are no wall sockets for miles around.
- kalleboo 12y ago
  If you use your smartphone for what you use your dumbphone for it will last just as long if not longer. I have a spare Android phone I use as my on-call phone where I have data turned off and it lasts 2 weeks no problem. edit: I used to use my dumbphone as most people use their smartphones today. It was a Sony Ericsson so it had multitasking Java J2ME support[0], a high-quality camera, GPS so I was continually shooting, tweeting, on IRC, Google Maps, Facebook etc. I had to swap batteries halfway through the day same as I do now. Not much has changed. [0] https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2612/4022002606_b6c5935cf4_o.png https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2612/4022002606_b6c5935cf4_o....
jordanpg 12y ago
Is it worth noting that if wearables caught on, this would offload some of the work from phone batteries, effectively extending battery life? A big if, to be sure.
kalleboo 12y ago
The dream technology: Wearable/mobile electronics that pull energy from your body. "Oh, my battery is low. I better eat some chocolate."
- VLM 12y ago
  Wireless charger in your pocket would be close to "from your body" request. Of course this leads to heavy pocket syndrome.
kemiller 12y ago
"Forget self-driving cars. People really want anti-gravity." I mean, of course they want better batteries, but it's not like there is a lack of investment in better energy storage.
- icefox 12y ago
  And while people might want anti-gravity they are only actually willing to pay for the car that has the cooler look.
shpx 12y ago
Just like people wanted a faster horse?
ufmace 12y ago
I am often disappointed by the battery life of my phone, but I think that what we need isn't bigger batteries, but better software. Supposedly, when working on Lollipop, Google engineers left a Nexus phone running on Airplane mode, and it lasted a month on a charge. I'm not sure if it actually happened, but it's believable. Goes to show the point that if we can manage power usage well, multi-day run times are perfectly practical without mammoth batteries. I'm not sure what's going on with it in the iOS world, but Google seems to be working on this with the power management changes in Lollipop. They still have a long way to go, since the first thing I noticed on upgrading to it was random massive battery drain for no apparent reason. It seems to have gone away since I uninstalled Foursquare, but that was a random guess, and I'm still not sure if it was the main reason. Anyways, point is that the OS-level changes to make it easier to sip power are good, but app compliance is still spotty. I think that what we really need in Android is a good, OS-level way of monitoring which apps are actually causing idle wakelocks, GPS usage, and other non-obvious power drains. If the users can see that App X is what's killing their battery, they will presumably uninstall it and yell at the App developers instead of at Google, or maybe decide that the app does actually need to do that, and it's worth it, but at least they know it's the app's fault, and not Android's. Possibly some sort of option to notify the user if an app's idle power usage is over some threshold and ask them if they're really okay with that.
- derekp7 12y ago
  The thing I never understood -- back in the days of pagers, a pager could last for a month or more on a AA battery. A pager has to be constantly listening for a signal, then wake up and take action. So couldn't a phone be designed the same way? Have the main processor at idle, and offload event listening/processing to another low power processor chip. Then, wake up the main CPU when more advanced processing is required.
  - jobposter1234 12y ago
    Umm... smart phones do this? It's a big reason phones can last so long with serious power requirements. A big reason for the phone/mobile specific chipsets was to enable these features.
hyp0 12y ago
NB. People may want better battery life, but they'll still pay for better features or performance. Of better batteries would give both, but we've had intense R&D for decades, and it's a difficult problem. (and if we had them, do you think it will go into battery life or features/performance...?) also, 4K looks incredible - but where do you get 4K shows? BTW I'm sick of refreshing HN 3 times to make sure my vote was counted. I'm not voting anymore.

81 points by frostmatthew 12y ago

If Apple announced the next iPhone and it had a battery that lasted twice as long as the current one I think a lot of people would be happy. I've noticed I get about 1.5 days now with my iPhone 6 and not having to worry if I forget to charge it at night is great. If it could get me to the end of the next day it would be perfect. It seems that every year phone manufacturers make battery improvements but these are offset by the new sensors and screens. If they skipped everything except battery for one generation, doubled it, and then went back to features would they be able to continue adding features at the previous rate while maintaining the new battery life?

marknutter 12y ago
But what if you forget to charge it at the end of the second day? Maybe what you need isn't a better battery but something that reminds you to charge your phone at night?
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  The point is more - "I can't get to a charger tonight but I don't need to worry as it'll last until tomorrow night." Charging each night isn't an inconvenience for most people and they would probably continue doing that (nobody waits until 0% to charge) but it provides extra breathing room on the occasions it's just not possible for you to charge.

bpodgursky 12y ago

If phone manufacturers weren't in a constant race to cut the last .1 oz off of their phones while still being barely-sufficient to get through a day, this wouldn't even be an issue. I'd be happy to double my phone's weight for 3 days of life.

jarcane 12y ago
My last two phones I've bought deliberately bigger and bulkier in part because they had bigger battery capacities as a result (EVO 4G and Lumia 1320). I'd rather have a phone that can survive if I miss a night of charge.
jcfrei 12y ago
For most manufacturers and models battery life has actually increased marginally with each model (one notable exception being LG's G2 vs G3). See for example: http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/mobile-phones/1402071/best-battery-life-2014-60-smartphones-tested http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/mobile-phones/1402071/best-ba...

dorfsmay 12y ago

True. I'm one of those people who religiously plug my phone every night, yet, I often ran out of power when I really needed it (eg: browsing / tethering on a long train trip). I recently got a One plus one, and I really couldn't tell you all the good geeky spec, I actually don't care about all it's little flaws, but I loves the amazing battery life. I will not buy another phone with lesser battery life. There is no other geeky spec that can trump that.

vinceguidry 12y ago

The company that wins the jackpot on this isn't going to be the one with the most advanced batteries. It's going to be the company that figures out how to cut platform bloat down to a reasonable size, reducing energy consumption by an order of magnitude. They're also going to have to figure out ways to keep third-party apps from undoing their hard work.

diego_moita 12y ago
> It's going to be the company that figures out how to cut platform bloat down to a reasonable size, reducing energy consumption by an order of magnitude. I'd say there is evidence for your argument; there is one company trying to play that game on the smartwatch industry: Pebble. Their watches can run for a much longer time than the competition because they took your approach: lean and basic. And they've been doing well, holding on against very strong contenders (Google, Asus, Samsung, LG). My Android Wear watch (LG watch) typically runs for 1-2 days with a battery charge. I can get my Pebble running for even 17 days. It is very far from perfect, but for me is the minimum acceptable.
mikeash 12y ago
That only gets you so far. You can extend your standby time enormously that way, but people want to actually use their devices. I don't see a way to attain an order of magnitude improvement on the energy consumption of web browsing just by cutting bloat. Ultimately you still have to emit lots of photons to communicate with the user and the network.
- wampus 12y ago
  My wife just discovered that if she puts her phone in airplane mode when playing solitaire it doesn't overheat and her battery lasts longer. This app should be the poster boy for being lightweight and efficient, but is instead used to showcase an advertising network. Who is the actual user here? Everything that doesn't improve the experience of playing solitaire is bloat in this case. There are countless more examples.
kalleboo 12y ago

shocks 12y ago

I got an LG G3 recently and the battery life is excellent. It'll happily last two days.

listic 12y ago
That's not what I would call great, but that's a start. I believe hardware manufacturers still don't take energy saving as serious as they should.
jordanpg 12y ago
An LG G3 with the auto brightness feature enabled, maybe. With brightness bumped up to a more user friendly level, my battery lasts <<1 day. I like this phone, but consider the battery life to be laughably bad.
- shocks 12y ago
  I don't use auto brightness. I have it set to 50% pretty much all the time.

meesterdude 12y ago

I would welcome some additional thickness in my iphone for a better battery life. The end goal should not be a paperthin phone; it should be a phone that has a long charge time and fits reasonably into your pocket / hand. Phones are pretty important to people and it's silly something so important is so needy of recharging. It's not technology so much that is the problem, it is design principles and priorities.

ekianjo 12y ago
I agree but there are issues with having bigger batteries as well: they add a lot of weight and could result in more wrist/arm pain for those using their phones for extended time. You certainly don't want your phone to be as heavy as a brick.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >* they add a lot of weight and could result in more wrist/arm pain for those using their phones for extended time.* Seriously? I think we somehow survived the nineties, early '00s without such issues. >* You certainly don't want your phone to be as heavy as a brick.* It's been at least 5-10 years that we've been very far away from that situation...
  - ekianjo 12y ago
    > Seriously? I think we somehow survived the nineties, early '00s without such issues. Smartphones were not mainstream in the early '00s. All the "normal" phones were very light and very portable.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      For about 100 years or so the handset was a lot heavier than todays smartphones and nobody thought anything of it. My grandmom had one of those old black bakelite jobs, it must have weighed at least 2 pounds and could be used as a means of self defense.

acd 12y ago

I think wearable watches has to be designed differently. Think a watch bracelet with the battery around the arm, also add solar cells to recharge that battery.

ansgri 12y ago
Remember those non-automatic mechanical watches? 2-5 days on a single charge was normal. Wireless charge + 2 days battery life is perfectly ok for most cases. OTOH, even mechanical watches can auto-recharge now, why not autorecharge smart watches?
Retra 12y ago
I am very happy with smartphones. Mostly because having one means I don't have to wear a watch.
- mod 12y ago
  I'd be very happy if my watch could take over the majority of my phone's functions--calling, texting. Mostly because then I wouldn't have to carry a phone in my pocket.
  - Retra 12y ago
    Just attach a chain to your smartphone and call it a "smartpocketwatch."

userbinator 12y ago

Also related: easily removable batteries, and preferably in standardised sizes. The fastest way to get from empty to full is not to wait for it charge, but to swap in an already-charged battery. I think thinness is overrated too, as a device thinner than ~10mm starts getting rather difficult to pick up from a flat surface and hold comfortably (I have big hands.)

comrade1 12y ago
I read the (short) article and didn't see anything about people wanting removable batteries. For myself, I'd rather have a long-lasting integrated battery than a removable battery. For example, my current laptop (recent macbook pro) with its integrated battery lets me work the entire flight from SFO/LAX to AMS/CDG (10 hours). Whereas my previous laptop would make me change the battery just to go from BOS to SFO (6 hours) and even then I was running out of charge on the second battery. Does anyone know why the integrated batteries aren't more form-fitting? If you could have the battery fill all of the empty spaces you could probably get even better charge. Are 'pourable' batteries possible?
- mschuster91 12y ago
  > Does anyone know why the integrated batteries aren't more form-fitting? If you could have the battery fill all of the empty spaces you could probably get even better charge. Yeah, LiPo batteries are quite flexible, but the problem is that you have to balance multiple different-sized subcells when trying to fit battery in every cubic inch of space in your laptop.
adamgravitis 12y ago
I massively disagree with the importance of swappable batteries. While I suppose there are people who are pretty happy hauling around a bunch of batteries with them, I haven't considered such a thing since camcorders were cool. A big part of keeping technology mainstream is to not require a utility belt. (n.b. I don't mind if they're user-removable for replacement once they've totally died, but this also seems to have become rather rare for what I assume are manufacturing reasons)

jokoon 12y ago

other alternative, just make slower hardware, and optimize the software running on it. optimizing and reducing the amount of functionalities might also save a very big amount of battery. Honestly, what I'd buy, is a * 4 inch e-ink screen device * that can close like a laptop, with a physical keyboard, * with a CPU that sacrifice features and speed for less power consumption * no camera, * only wifi, or with 3G disabled by default, no phone function * browser with a very limited set of feature: limited to css 2, js deactivated by default: it's amazing the amount of firefox modules that can be disabled: http://sourceforge.net/projects/lightfirefox/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/lightfirefox/ * no video acceleration, no graphics acceleration, and no fading/smooth window transitions, 10hz refresh rate is more than enough to read text I wonder which of those things save the most battery, but I guess all of this would easily double battery life. Also I guess that device would cost much less and be very attractive for students, and be enough to just code if you'd have an online compiler. If you want calls, just buy a candybar phone, like the the latest nokia 100 or 200 series. I'd buy it even if it cost $300. I wonder how expensive e-ink screen are, but I would not be surprised it's mostly a patent issue.

marknutter 12y ago
Take everything away from the computer that makes the average person excited about using the computer?
- jokoon 12y ago
  You mean like a nintendo DS or a Sony PSP. A computer doesn't need to have bells and whistles to be functional.
cuu508 12y ago
May I suggest you to use typewriter? It runs without batteries, and is about as useful, you can write on it.
kalleboo 12y ago
っ http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/2005-04-16_Psion_Serie_5mx_PRO_24MB_beschn_unscharf_scharf.JPG http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/2005-04-1...

Kiro 12y ago

So I must choose? Wearable tech or better batteries but you can't have both! Of course people want better batteries but I don't see how that leads to the conclusion of the headline.

cheatdeath 12y ago

Is there some sort of Parkinson's Law that phones will consume as much power as is available to them?

mikeash 12y ago

It's really interesting how much improved batteries could improve all sorts of tech. Phones and wearables are pretty much the least interesting of them, too. Imagine for a moment that batteries are 1000x better than now. A ton of problems are magically solved. Renewable energy is suddenly trivial. Run the world on solar and wind, done! Electric cars are now the only reasonable kind. Trucks and trains too. Even airplanes. Many satellites could be replaced with long-duration drones. Those that remain can be built lighter and cheaper. Supersonic airliners might even come back, since fuel costs would drop through the floor. Oh, and your smartphone could run for three years on a charge. Woohoo. Compare with something like fusion power, which only solves a tiny fraction of the above. Without storage, fusion isn't that interesting. With good storage, it's not necessary!

noir_lord 12y ago
Yup, Generation is the 'easiest' part of the equation and has been since we had reliable nuclear power the issue is distribution via batteries. If you look at the energy density of gasoline vs a battery for the same weight it, Petrol (Gasoline) 44MJ/Kg, Li-Ion batteries (the best ones, 0.875MJ/Kg). Obviously there are conversion efficiencies to take into account (ICE's have a lower conversion efficiencies than Electric Drive). 1000x wouldn't be required, 10x would revolutionize many fields and 100x would be incredible.

marknutter 12y ago

What percentage of people don't/can't charge their phone every night? And of those who don't/can't, what percentage of them aren't satisfied with the myriad external battery cases and on-the-go-chargers available for smart phones. I challenge the assumption that the majority of people are asking for better batteries. I think it's like people asking Ford for a faster horse.

adamgravitis 12y ago
I'm not sure it's a perfect analogy. People might ask Ford to go faster, people are asking technology to let them work longer before it dies. I think the sentiment is pretty clear: this doesn't mean we need better Li-ion batteries per se, but either we need hugely longer-lasting sources of power, or we need hugely more efficient displays/radios/processors.
kalleboo 12y ago
For me it's not the end of the world, just an annoyance. Why am I carrying around a spare battery and charging cable just so my phone can be 2mm thinner?
- marknutter 12y ago
  But you can literally buy cases today that add additional thickness and provide extra battery capacity. Have you bought one, and if not, why? Perhaps you like your thin phone after all?
  - kalleboo 12y ago
    The battery cases waste way too much space with all the extra layers of plastic, redundant charging circuits and ports. External batteries are still more space-efficient (and yes I do carry them, every day). I would absolutely buy something like the Motorola Maxx if work didn't require me to use iOS.
    - marknutter 12y ago

jacquesm 12y ago

This is one of the main reasons I still don't have a smartphone. Battery life on an old Nokia is well in excess of 5 days, it works whenever I need it when on the road even when there are no wall sockets for miles around.

kalleboo 12y ago
If you use your smartphone for what you use your dumbphone for it will last just as long if not longer. I have a spare Android phone I use as my on-call phone where I have data turned off and it lasts 2 weeks no problem. edit: I used to use my dumbphone as most people use their smartphones today. It was a Sony Ericsson so it had multitasking Java J2ME support[0], a high-quality camera, GPS so I was continually shooting, tweeting, on IRC, Google Maps, Facebook etc. I had to swap batteries halfway through the day same as I do now. Not much has changed. [0] https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2612/4022002606_b6c5935cf4_o.png https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2612/4022002606_b6c5935cf4_o....

jordanpg 12y ago

Is it worth noting that if wearables caught on, this would offload some of the work from phone batteries, effectively extending battery life? A big if, to be sure.

kalleboo 12y ago

The dream technology: Wearable/mobile electronics that pull energy from your body. "Oh, my battery is low. I better eat some chocolate."

VLM 12y ago
Wireless charger in your pocket would be close to "from your body" request. Of course this leads to heavy pocket syndrome.

kemiller 12y ago

"Forget self-driving cars. People really want anti-gravity." I mean, of course they want better batteries, but it's not like there is a lack of investment in better energy storage.

icefox 12y ago
And while people might want anti-gravity they are only actually willing to pay for the car that has the cooler look.

shpx 12y ago

Just like people wanted a faster horse?

ufmace 12y ago

I am often disappointed by the battery life of my phone, but I think that what we need isn't bigger batteries, but better software. Supposedly, when working on Lollipop, Google engineers left a Nexus phone running on Airplane mode, and it lasted a month on a charge. I'm not sure if it actually happened, but it's believable. Goes to show the point that if we can manage power usage well, multi-day run times are perfectly practical without mammoth batteries. I'm not sure what's going on with it in the iOS world, but Google seems to be working on this with the power management changes in Lollipop. They still have a long way to go, since the first thing I noticed on upgrading to it was random massive battery drain for no apparent reason. It seems to have gone away since I uninstalled Foursquare, but that was a random guess, and I'm still not sure if it was the main reason. Anyways, point is that the OS-level changes to make it easier to sip power are good, but app compliance is still spotty. I think that what we really need in Android is a good, OS-level way of monitoring which apps are actually causing idle wakelocks, GPS usage, and other non-obvious power drains. If the users can see that App X is what's killing their battery, they will presumably uninstall it and yell at the App developers instead of at Google, or maybe decide that the app does actually need to do that, and it's worth it, but at least they know it's the app's fault, and not Android's. Possibly some sort of option to notify the user if an app's idle power usage is over some threshold and ask them if they're really okay with that.

derekp7 12y ago
The thing I never understood -- back in the days of pagers, a pager could last for a month or more on a AA battery. A pager has to be constantly listening for a signal, then wake up and take action. So couldn't a phone be designed the same way? Have the main processor at idle, and offload event listening/processing to another low power processor chip. Then, wake up the main CPU when more advanced processing is required.
- jobposter1234 12y ago
  Umm... smart phones do this? It's a big reason phones can last so long with serious power requirements. A big reason for the phone/mobile specific chipsets was to enable these features.

hyp0 12y ago

NB. People may want better battery life, but they'll still pay for better features or performance. Of better batteries would give both, but we've had intense R&D for decades, and it's a difficult problem. (and if we had them, do you think it will go into battery life or features/performance...?) also, 4K looks incredible - but where do you get 4K shows? BTW I'm sick of refreshing HN 3 times to make sure my vote was counted. I'm not voting anymore.