Clip of the Day: The Grateful Dead
The battery life of mobile devices is one of the limitations – engineers call it a “gating factor” – that controls the usefulness of a phone or tablet. Apple, as most people know, had a big problem with the battery life of the iPhone 4S. I am not going to discuss that here – mainly because I don’t know as much about the issue as most people who own the phone undoubtedly do.
The overall topic of device powering is important, however. A couple of years ago, there was a huge fear in the mobile gadget industry that two simultaneous trends would lead to big trouble. Devices were simultaneously called on to do more and were getting smaller, which limited battery size and therefore the power they could generate. Things don’t seem quite as serious today,however. Due to the advent of mobile video and the accompanying desire for bigger screens, devices shrinkage has, to some degree, reversed. Engineers also have pushed the bounds of lithium-ion battery capabilities.
There also are other technologies in the pipeline, many pioneered when the problem seemed more pressing. These include direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) and other exotic sounding mechanisms that focus on creating power on the spot through mixing of on-board ingredients. Batteries, of course, simply released stored power. Other interesting ideas include solar powering and harvesting the energy created by walking and other movements.
Solar already plays a role in powering devices. The technology, most often seen in calculators, is more a supplement than a replacement. The technology of DMFCs is not fully baked and requires a distribution chain that does not exist. (It sounds like a joke, but servicing the DMFC supply chain is seen as a possible evolutionary path for the portable cigarette lighter industry.) A third challenge is that carrying DMFCs on planes is problematic.
So look for batteries to keep on going, so to speak. It is an area that teleworkers should watch, but not one that is a current emergency. Here is a nice piece at ZDNet on laptops with inordinately long working batteries.
On a side note, it’s interesting that companies rush telecommunications products out more quickly than traditional manufacturing cycles. This can lead to problems such as the iPhone battery issue. What formerly was caught in the lab or during field tests now makes it into the release. That said, I am not certain this is the case with the iPhone/iOS battery issue, but it certainly is the type of thing that crops up in this new and time-compressed era.
