Battery Technology - where is it ?!?!

[Skeeter]

I think the main problem is that the battery tech development curve is lagging behind the curve of the technology itself.

Phones that last less than a day is now considered the norm, whereas I remember things like my Nokia N73 lasting a week easily. Thats not because battery tech hasn't moved on, its because the phone tech has galloped forward at such a rapid pace batteries haven't kept up.

I carry around a small light device in my pocket that has the power and performance of a large, chunky and heavy laptop from 10 years ago.

I do think theres unnessasary pressure put on making things small and light however. I would gladly have a phone that was a couple of mm thicker than this if it meant a 50% better battery.

 

[V F]

I do think theres unnessasary pressure put on making things small and light however. I would gladly have a phone that was a couple of mm thicker than this if it meant a 50% better battery.

The masses would be bitching with petitions. Small, smaller, thinner, thinner! Now its longer and thinner. Everything has got to be so thin it bends in their pockets and bitches because of it.

 

[Aod]

I think the main problem is that the battery tech development curve is lagging behind the curve of the technology itself.

Phones that last less than a day is now considered the norm, whereas I remember things like my Nokia N73 lasting a week easily. Thats not because battery tech hasn't moved on, its because the phone tech has galloped forward at such a rapid pace batteries haven't kept up.

I carry around a small light device in my pocket that has the power and performance of a large, chunky and heavy laptop from 10 years ago.

I do think theres unnessasary pressure put on making things small and light however. I would gladly have a phone that was a couple of mm thicker than this if it meant a 50% better battery.

I agree that the current market direction of thinner, thinner thinner is partially responsible for the issue. Consider that the N73 was quite a chunky beast and had a pretty big battery. I also remember that if you used it heavily (like, teenager-with-Facebook) heavily, it would barely manage a day.

The masses would be bitching with petitions. Small, smaller, thinner, thinner! Now its longer and thinner. Everything has got to be so thin it bends in their pockets and bitches because of it.

There's an interesting dichotomy in the tech market these days, split between two main groups - those who just want the thinnest, slimmest, "coolest" device, and to hell with practicality, and those who'd be perfectly content with slightly thicker devices at the benefit of dramatically improved battery life.

I also think that the "phone screen size" race needs to end, phones that are commonplace now would have been seen as comically oversized back in 2010.
Think that sounds like rubbish? Remember the Dell Streak (or Dell Mini 5) from 2010. It was considered so large and bulky at the time that people were literally ridiculed for using them as a conventional phone instead of using a headset or bluetooth earpiece. The Dell streak only had a 5 inch screen, and that's practically the standard for flagship phones now.

 

[slinxy]

Battery Tech has moved forwards loads!

Not only do batteries store more power but they are safer to use and on the planet resources too.

I follow battery tech rather closely as a vaper and as a hobbist electronics.. And it's vastly i proved, most end users don't notice it as the equipment we use today is much more power hunger than the ones we had 20 years ago.

If we had the same batteries we do now running in kits of old, they will last much longer.. I.e. Nokia 8210 battery was a 650 mAh, while the iPhone 5 battery is 1900 mAh, if you cut the iPhone battery in half and placed the parts on top of each other, it's roughly the same size but last nearly three times longer.

 

[Haggisman]

I agree that the current market direction of thinner, thinner thinner is partially responsible for the issue. Consider that the N73 was quite a chunky beast and had a pretty big battery. I also remember that if you used it heavily (like, teenager-with-Facebook) heavily, it would barely manage a day.



There's an interesting dichotomy in the tech market these days, split between two main groups - those who just want the thinnest, slimmest, "coolest" device, and to hell with practicality, and those who'd be perfectly content with slightly thicker devices at the benefit of dramatically improved battery life.

I also think that the "phone screen size" race needs to end, phones that are commonplace now would have been seen as comically oversized back in 2010.
Think that sounds like rubbish? Remember the Dell Streak (or Dell Mini 5) from 2010. It was considered so large and bulky at the time that people were literally ridiculed for using them as a conventional phone instead of using a headset or bluetooth earpiece. The Dell streak only had a 5 inch screen, and that's practically the standard for flagship phones now.

I loved my dell streak but yeah, I did get some funny looks, also they were fragile as hell! I dropped it from about 1ft onto laminate floor and the screen shattered... I dropped my note 1 from head height onto concrete and it didn't even scratch the casing!

 

[bitslice]

ARM-powered chip aims for battery life measured in decades

http://arstechnica.com/information-...ip-aims-for-battery-life-measured-in-decades/

quite impressive power/Mhz

 

[Energize]

I use 74 Headway LifePO4 38140S 12Ah batteries in my power chair. I wish there was something better
The battery tech is very slow in moving forward.

There are...

Eg. LiCoO2

More than twice the capacity of LiFePO4 batteries.

Battery Tech has moved forwards loads!

Not only do batteries store more power but they are safer to use and on the planet resources too.

Well I wouldn't say that, lithium batteries are notoriously hazardous compared to NiMh, Zinc Carbon and Alkaline batteries. Even the heavy metal containing batteries like Lead-Acid and NiCd don't tend to set on fire or explode when improperly used.

 

[Turambar]

Still waiting on the fuel cells we were promised a few years ago.

 

[StriderX]

Batteries unfortunately require rather rare minerals, which is why people want graphene, for most if not all the jobs REM's do.

 

[alx]

The battery technology hasn't been developed as much due to petrol. If you think about how much money there is in petrol and you were getting a slice of that money, you wouldn't want this to end, would you? People were most likely delaying the development as it was in favour of those who make money out of petrol.

I'm more interested in H2 (Hydrogen) used as petrol and a big plus unlike the batteries its not harmful to our environment.

Unless you use fossil fuels to produce the hydrogen......

 

[Christmas themed thank]

Hydrogen fuel cells will be the future for the cars. If we can crack nuclear fusion, that will be clean energy for everything.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

I'm with the Op on this but I don't think he explained himself properly.
This is a subject that comes up every year when we go round to our relatives houses at Christmas with young kids who have had battery powered toys.
It always come round to the same debate that for those type of toys, battery technology hasn't come on a lot and you hear the same complaint "I put bloody Duracells in that 2 hours ago and they've worn out already"..
Yes they could buy a mass of chargers with the latest batteries to charge up every day but it still doesn't address the original problem.
If I could get my mono cassette recorder back from the mid 70s where the batteries would last a couple of hours I'm pretty sure I wouldn't get a lot more out of newer batteries without multi-charging.

 

[Glaucus]

Except they would, did you even read the thread. Your 70s cassette player would likely last 16hrs +

 

[Deleted member 66701]

I'm with the Op on this but I don't think he explained himself properly.
This is a subject that comes up every year when we go round to our relatives houses at Christmas with young kids who have had battery powered toys.
It always come round to the same debate that for those type of toys, battery technology hasn't come on a lot and you hear the same complaint "I put bloody Duracells in that 2 hours ago and they've worn out already"..
Yes they could buy a mass of chargers with the latest batteries to charge up every day but it still doesn't address the original problem.
If I could get my mono cassette recorder back from the mid 70s where the batteries would last a couple of hours I'm pretty sure I wouldn't get a lot more out of newer batteries without multi-charging.

An AA Duracell zinc battery from the 70's had approx 400mah of power. A modern AA Eneloop XX battery has 2500mah of power. So you'd see at least 6 times the run time - likely 7-8 due to less voltage sag experienced by the Eneloops.

If you stuck an Energiser Ultimate Lithium AA battery in it you'd get nearly 9 times the run time as they deliver near 3500mah of power.

 

[Mark A]

Battery technology is getting better and better all the time. Plus once brushless motors become more popular that doubles the battery life as well. My brushless impact driver lasts a full day of use on a 4ah battery and now there are even 5ah batteries.

10 or so years ago the highest battery you could get was 1.3ah nicad/nimh and no brushless tools. All day I had to keep swapping batteries and putting the on charge. I don't even take a charger to work any more.

 

[Scougar]

To me the basic disposable battery tech is pretty much staying the same. It's like the incandescent light bulb, they don't want to improve it as they make good money from it.

Rechargeable tech is where it's at nowadays.

 

[d_brennen]

I got my little girl a Zoomie dog for Christmas, it's frankly incredible in a technology sense what is possible to cram into a mere toy. IIRC it uses a a small LiPo battery, lasts for 15-20 minutes or so of constant play and will recharge in about half an hour. When she's not looking, I'm going to see if I can cram a Turnigy 750mah 1s battery in there

Toys in my day were used HUGE C/D cell batteries, or rakes of AA cells, lasted no time at all too. Everything's moved on

 

[SexyGreyFox]

An AA Duracell zinc battery from the 70's had approx 400mah of power. A modern AA Eneloop XX battery has 2500mah of power. So you'd see at least 6 times the run time - likely 7-8 due to less voltage sag experienced by the Eneloops.

If you stuck an Energiser Ultimate Lithium AA battery in it you'd get nearly 9 times the run time as they deliver near 3500mah of power.

A quick Google shows that the other batteries are way dearer so I would expect more out of them.

 

[Energize]

An AA Duracell zinc battery from the 70's had approx 400mah of power. A modern AA Eneloop XX battery has 2500mah of power. So you'd see at least 6 times the run time - likely 7-8 due to less voltage sag experienced by the Eneloops.

If you stuck an Energiser Ultimate Lithium AA battery in it you'd get nearly 9 times the run time as they deliver near 3500mah of power.

It's actually about 3x that because lithium batteries operate at a higher voltage.

You need to multiply mAh rating by voltage to determine energy density, so a 3500mAh li-po battery would last 27 times longer than a 400mAh zinc carbon battery.

 

[arknor]

battery tech went miles.

lipo rc battery takes like 50mins to charge with a good charger for about 15-20mins runtime.

nimh was hours and hours of charging for maybe 8 minutes.

you also have to consider lipo don't have the massive loss of power after the first few minutes like nimh does