Whilst battery life may be improving slightly these days its not good enough,our phones are getting bigger,screens getting better and the battery it still behind its an ongoing tech cycle,think back to when we had small phones and wanted bigger phones but the battery technology was behind..Back then we did however have phones that would last for days on one charge but these phones are not as capable as today’s mobile devices.Given that there is phones that still last days but these are dumb phones which are slowly dwindling away.
Samples of some phones that could last days on one charge back in the day.
This however varies by individual,today we are more on our devices than ever its a fact and we are now entering into a new era with a term called battery anxiety.Something we have been working on a while and will be discussing soon on the big screen and how we can avoid it.The average smartphone user would see through the day on one charge but there is always the thought of our battery running out or realising when its too late.
However with phones such as the Note Edge below there is ample battery life,this is fine once you are the average user,but if you are a power user you may find things different,given that you can now charge some phones in a space of a few minutes with fast charging is it enough ?
The Irish examiner reports the following..
Irish and American scientists are to receive more than €1m to research new ways to improve the battery life of mobile phones and other portable devices.
Researchers at the Tyndall National Institute in University College Cork, Dublin City University, Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Texas in Dallas are to collaborate on the three-year project which aims to reduce power consumption in mobile devices.
Researchers will also explore new materials in the miniaturisation of transistors which are essential to all portable devices.
The project is to receive €343,000 from Science Foundation Ireland, £319,859 from Invest NI and $420,000 from the National Science Foundation in the US.
The Irish and American scientists are collaborating to develop ultra-efficient electronic materials through the Unite project: Understanding the nature of interfaces in two-dimensional electronic devices.
Unite will create and test the properties of atomically-thin layers of semiconductors called transition metal dichalcogenides. These are 100,000 times smaller than the smallest thing the human eye can see. The properties these materials have displayed suggest they could facilitate extremely efficient power usage and high performance computing.
“Materials that we are currently reliant on, such as silicon, are soon expected to reach the limit of their performance,” said Tyndall’s lead researcher Dr Paul Hurley.
“If we want to continue to increase performance, while maintaining or even reducing power consumption, it is important to explore these new transition metal dichalcogenides materials.”
The application of these materials in transistors could prolong the battery charge life of portable devices and phones, as well as having applications in larger more power-intensive operations like data storage and server centres.
Unite builds on a previous highly successful US-Ireland collaborative project between these academic research partners called Focus. The success of this project played a role in demonstrating why funders should back the new project, including training for five graduate students in the USA and Ireland, as well as student exchanges between the institutes.
Will we ever see a point in the future when there is no need to carry battery packs or worry about charging ?