A few days ago, I came across a really cool Quora question. It asked “What are the main reasons why batteries have not improved at the same rate as semiconductors?” The highest rated answer was a very helpful one by Asher Sinensky, who pointed out the difference between the makeup, useability and overall processing of the compared subjects, so by the end the reason behind the advancement discrepancy made perfect sense.
But it did get me wondering about just how much batteries have improved over time. Obviously the older models are going to have been greatly advanced since that time, and just over the last two decades we have seen improvements on both battery life, and how devices use what is charged.
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I am not that old but I still remember the time when I had to charge my phone once a day. And that was a pain because I ended up forgetting to do so and it created that annoying noise crying for food. Now with my iPhone, I don’t ever think about charging: It charges itself when being connected to my laptop through USB! And it runs for a couple of days (with me using camera, iTunes, Twitter app, etc). And my husband doesn’t think that’s enough: When will they learn to charge via air? Bluetooth?
Have there been a lot of improvements recently I just didn’t notice?
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The Recent Battery Advances
I found quite a few articles that talk about it (surprising, as I thought I would be one of the few people interested in the topic). My favorite was this two page piece by MIT Technology Review’s Kevil Bullis. What I found so fascinating was his description of electrodes released by MIT researchers three years ago. It is an interesting peek into the changes that have happened since then.
But these are car related batteries, mainly looking to improve the performance of hybrid or electric cars. What about small consumer batteries, like those powering phones? These seem to have been little advancement in that regard.
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A similar question was asked by another Quora user that provided a small bar graph that illustrated the wh/kg of different battery types. He wanted to know why advances in the battery industry haven’t happened lately. It was helpfully answered by Jason Lemkin, who co-founded battery start-up NanoGram.
Out of all of his reasons (and he gives several), I think the most intriguing and likely is the cost and risk involved in battery development. As he points out, creating batteries is incredibly difficult to do. Lithium is a dangerous substance, and many factories have gone up in flames in some of the most horrific fires you will ever see.
I would suggest checking out his response, as it really does get into the practical reasons that battery improvements are so rare. Including why the market is so difficult to break into.
What do you think about battery improvements? Have you heard of any start-ups that have promising sounding products on their way? Let us know in the comments.
[Image credit: Bryan Rosengrant, Flickr]
Thank you for sharing the post jessy. What I personally feel is that batteries have been improved by a significant margin but so do the use of battery. I remember the time when I used to have a Nokia phone which I need to charge it once in a week & it worked great for me. Reason for the same was that there was not very much applications running on its background at that time. But Now a days with the introduction of some new OS like Android, iOS & windows 8 life of the battery seems to be less as a lot of applications automatically runs on the background of Smartphone using any of these OS. We need Internet almost 24 hours, play game almost 2-3 hours a day, & run many more useful apps on it so ofcourse battery will drain with so much of use. Good thing is that these battery makers are continuously trying to make some improvement & coming up with upgraded versions.
I agree with you that the question with batteries for gadget is one of the hootest today – firstly because of size and secondly, and most importantly because of the gadget working time. As for me, I think sun batteries should be used much wider, at least in notebooks and tablets – to be able to charge without electiricity and in travels
Yep the mobile battery technology has been improved over times. Nowadays there are also wireless batteries available which is indeed a marvelous creation of Developers. The modern batteries also have a lot of high capacities to handle CPU’s having more than 1Ghz cloaking power.
I think with nano-technology the batteries will improve still more and more but its yet to come we must wait for that!
I think that advancements are being made pretty quickly. I remember somewhere that the new generation Li-Po ( Batteries with lithium and polonium ) batteries are better than the current lot in the market. But still it would take time for a major breakthrough because of the costs involved!
Hi Jessi Well update post about batteries improvement as i have used some mobile felt that battery backup was not good if i try to browse its totally down within a 2 hours i dont want to specify the brand name but its been recently launched between thanks for the tip
Nice post Jessy.
I think that batteries and charging possibilities have gone quite far and doing good. But, I’m not very sure about cloud charging or bluetooth charging technologies. As long as the battery gets charged from our own accessories it’s a thing. Charging from Bluetooth or air might also increase risk of hacking and data theft.
Then they would have to introduce some kind of security during charging too. Well, that’s something in the future. Good post! 🙂 Cheers!
Seriously battery working time is one of the major concerns of customers while upgrading their phones with the advancement of technology. As highlighted by raj once I also had a Nokia phone which I used to charge twice in a week but now my smartphone battery does not work that way. Obviously the number of applications running on phones have decreased working time of the batteries.