Upcoming battery technology

Interesting article. Just wonder which tech will let us play games on our laptops for a full day on battery at full power.

Future batteries, coming soon: charge in seconds, last months and power over the air - Pocket-lint

 

Hah! I know the girl in the first two photos from college - I've been following uBeam for some time, it's definitely interesting/compelling tech if they can get it working right (and provide enough juice for a power hungry device under load).

 

My interest is the longer recharge cycle life and super fast recharge. This for phones and cars will be a major game changer.

 

These and more have been researched and prototyped for years. In order to have meaningful and significant improvement in the device batteries most people use, there are two additional steps needed that virtually none of these is close to: mass production and standardization. Without these, all the research and developed techniques in the world, while positive, won't change a thing for the experience of most people.

 

Well, there's a lot of stuff of widely varying quality in there. As an example, while that ubeam stuff may sound interesting to the layperson, there's no getting around the fact that the 1/r^2 power law will doom any such idea from the outset: A device like that would be fantastically inefficient, and require enormous amounts of power at the source for there to be any meaningful amount of power at the receiving end. In short, a non-starter.

 

Pirx, I agree.

How I see it; if those technologies are so good, we'd be using them already. Not saying innovation has stopped. Rather, science/scientists doesn't sit still either. What we're using is the best - taking into consideration all the factors needed to produce any tech for many, many people at a fair price.

 

It just seems we're stunted with battery technology. There has to be much more efficient and compact ways to store energy than the Li-ion stuff we use now. I don't care so much about the 30 second charge (although it would be nice) but more about longevity. I'll charge for six hours if I can use a laptop maxed out for four.

 

I wouldn't complain about the Lithium battery technology: The Ni-Cd battery for my Toshiba T4400 weighed a couple of pounds and kept the computer running for less than 2 hours. And that was in the days when CPUs didn't need cooling fans because they didn't use much power.

And I also don't support inefficient charging methods unless the energy is free (eg solar).

John

 

faster charge, faster charge, faster charge, why need faster charge if the battery last long enough..

So out of (how many? I don't want to count), only 3-4 address the real problem, a battery that will freaking last longer.

 

Sorry just plain greedy here, I want a long lasting high capacity along with a 5 minute or less charge time. Forget inefficient power transfer methods other than the one that can charge off ambient noise.