News - New Li-ion micro-battery recharges 1,000 times faster

[HEXUS]

Could offer enough power for you to jump-start your car using your smartphone.

Read more.

[KrisWragg]

Does this mean we can go back to having phones that last a whole week on a single charge like back in the days of monochrome Nokias?

[Noxvayl]

@KrisWragg

I hope so, I've bought myself a Mugen extended battery to achieve that so would definitely be interested in a device that has that battery life out the box.

Recent history doesn't give me confidence that this will happen though, I suspect this will be an excuse to increase the speeds SoC run at even though smart phones are more than powerful enough.

[CK_1985]

So we could see a 30x jump forward in battery tech by the end of the year?! That would be amazing!

I'm sure it won't be that simple in reality, but it makes a nice change from the usual stories of new battery tech that always seem to be at least 10 years away from making it into actual devices...

[goldcd]

I don't give a toss if he is just fishing for VC funding - I am now happy with every aspect of my phone, apart from the damn battery. But I bet I end up with a 4k screen on my phone, before the battery lasts a week.

[Steve]

The way I see it, this isn't a silver bullet. It's about faster charging and higher current output. What about capacity?

Faster charging is great, but we don't need higher output current in mobile devices - they get hot enough as it is. More charge capacity is what we need.

In electric vehicles though, this could be great news.

[ajones]

The way I see it, this isn't a silver bullet. It's about faster charging and higher current output. What about capacity?

Faster charging is great, but we don't need higher output current in mobile devices - they get hot enough as it is. More charge capacity is what we need.

The answer is in the news report...

new batteries could enable devices to carry around 30 times more energy in the same amount of space

Which IMHO means greater capacity

[Hicks12]

The way I see it, this isn't a silver bullet. It's about faster charging and higher current output. What about
capacity?

Faster charging is great, but we don't need higher output current in mobile devices - they get hot enough as it is. More charge capacity is what we need.

In electric vehicles though, this could be great news.

It's in the report you must have missed it :-). It says 30 times more capacity or output 30x as fast so if they need more power they can but if they need more storage they can also get that . I think the point about electric cars is an important one, imagine having 30x the distance... And charging in an hour would be awesome.

[Steve]

Missed that bit ajones, thanks.

[YenRug]

I wonder if this would make recycling of existing batteries a viable proposition? At the moment, it seems like most people just bin their old batteries when they don't hold a charge any more; if the raw materials are still viable, though, you potentially have enough to create two new ones, maybe? Of course, I could be horribly wrong, having no appreciation of the chemical processes of what happens to the insides of LI batteries, but it could be something worth exploring.

[zaph0d]

I'd love to know if lifecycle of the batteries has been extended too. Currently the Li-Ion battery packs in cars are expected to last no more than 10 year max, and most manufacturers recommend changing the cells after 5 years / 100k km, whichever comes first.

If these can last for even 30 yrs / 1m km before needing replaced that'd be fantastic for future-proofing them and possibly even allow for them to be placed into long-haul trucks to increase their efficiency and reduce running costs.

Possibly even try what Top-Gear did with a small diesel jenny in the back of a car to allow for charging on-the-fly when energy levels get really low or just to allow for extended range.

[kingpotnoodle]

@KrisWragg

I hope so, I've bought myself a Mugen extended battery to achieve that so would definitely be interested in a device that has that battery life out the box.

Recent history doesn't give me confidence that this will happen though, I suspect this will be an excuse to increase the speeds SoC run at even though smart phones are more than powerful enough.

What would be super nice is if manufacturers could see their way to offering us both, ideally via selectable modes (endurance/performance) in the software running on chipsets such as Samsung's Exynos Octa.

Either way they can't just crank up the MHz and be damned, more power draw = more waste heat = burns/melt/fire/badstuff. They still have to live within the 4-5W peak dissipation that a large smartphone can handle unless someone also invents a magic plastic that can absorb environmental heat and convert it to electricity to recharge the device it encloses or dump it into subspace or some weird quantum plane (that would be pretty sweet).

[Biscuit]

Does this mean we can go back to having phones that last a whole week on a single charge like back in the days of monochrome Nokias?

Could last a month at 30x more :-D I would probably just end up using mine more though and smashing the battery in just as quick.

[dcwt2010]

I wonder if this would make recycling of existing batteries a viable proposition? At the moment, it seems like most people just bin their old batteries when they don't hold a charge any more; if the raw materials are still viable, though, you potentially have enough to create two new ones, maybe? Of course, I could be horribly wrong, having no appreciation of the chemical processes of what happens to the insides of LI batteries, but it could be something worth exploring.

You make a good point, there's only such much extraction lithium on Earth and until we learn how to produce more through fusion we really shouldn't be filling our landfills with lithium ladened items.

[Top_gun]

May I suggest a smaller battery and more charging points on the basis they will take literally seconds to recharge? Certainly paves the way for razor slim phones.

[Gerrard]

You make a good point, there's only such much extraction lithium on Earth and until we learn how to produce more through fusion we really shouldn't be filling our landfills with lithium ladened items.

I believe there are new technologies being researched to use sodium instead of lithium. Would be interesting if this technique could then be applied to that as well.