Battery life isn't going to get better anytime soon
posted Jan 19th 2005 1:51PM
Do we even have to remind everyone that it's the year 2005 and we still do not have a cellphone that can go
a month without recharging or a laptop we can use unplugged for more than a few hours? We all know what the culprit is:
sucky batteries paired with ever more feature-laden, wireless-enabled, power hungry gadgets. And there's no Moore's Law
for battery power, either—the Economist reports that the amount of energy a battery can store is on pace to grow a mere
8% a year, nowhere near fast enough to keep up with our mobile devices (and it remains to be seen whether fuel cells
will be able to fill the gap anytime soon). Maybe there'll be a few renegade manufacturers that strip out everything
unnecessary in order to offer a cellphone with extremely long battery life, but since it's hard to imagine anyone
removing WiFi from laptops (for example), we should probably all just got used to fighting over power outlets at
airports and Starbucks.
[Via Pocket PC Thoughts]
Actually as far as cell phones go, the effeciency has been increasing as well as the battery life. The biggest impact has been digital vs. analog. Everyone I know who's gotten a new cell phone has been very impressed by the battery life increase. A camera drains no power unless you use it. The "power hungry" color displays are actually really effecient anymore and shut off during calls. A grayscale display and feature removal isn't going to save any meaningful amounts of power.
Similarily, notebooks. Centrino notebooks have *amazing* battery life. My old P75 Toshiba was lucky to see an hour and a half of battery life, with a 10.4" passive matrix screen.
Now, centrino notebooks with a smaller battery get 5 hours of battery life.
I think the biggest thing isn't feature bloat. It's the demand for smaller sizes. In nearly every case, over the last 10 years cell phones, notebooks etc have shrunken, and the batteries with them.
The devices themselves are more effecient and use less power, and the batteries are more energy dense. But they're also smaller.
So yeah, you can build a cell phone with a month of standby. You'd just need a ~4500 mAh battery. But that would double the size of your cell phone.
Micro turbines:
http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1020811
someone needs to invent wireless power outlets. is that possible?
I have an idea: More power outlets at Starbucks and airports! At the US Airways Shuttle terminal in Boston, there are outlets everywhere. At other airport terminals, you have to fight for them.
So, convergence just ain't gonna be worthwhile anytime soon. I need to make calls with my phone, not waste the battery on music. :-)
I always bring extra multic outlet to allow anyone share with me. I am such an angel. :•)
My current (over three years old - a T39m) cellphone can run for close to a month on standby provided the following:
- I'm in an area with good reception
- I've fitted the larger battery that doesn't fit quite flush with the back of the phone. It's a standard Ericsson battery, though.
Of course, I don't want a camera or need a colour screen, and my T39 is small enough (although obviously I'd like IMAP e-mail, a full address book, a bigger screen, and no sticky-out antenna).
On the notebook front, I agree with the first poster - notebooks have got smaller, faster, lighter, and still have longer battery life. That's impressive.
> notebooks have got smaller, faster, lighter,
> and still have longer battery life.
Really? #1's claim of 5 hour battery life on Centrino notebooks makes me raise an eyebrow. Even MP3 player manufacturers constantly hype completely battery life -- just read through some mp3.com reviews. My experience is mostly with HP and Compaq equipment (since I work for a company who uses it exclusively) but I've yet to see a reasonably sized and equipped notebook that lasts more than 3 hours. Does anyone out there actually own a laptop (with a screen bigger than 10") that gets 5 hours? This I gotta see.
Ooops... I meant to say "completely unrealistic" battery life, in my post above.
The Toshiba Tecra M1 centrino got 7+ hours of battery life in tests:
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,110015,00.asp
"How does Centrino help battery life? For starters, the 1.3-, 1.4-, 1.5-, and 1.6-GHz Pentium M chips draw an average of less than 1 watt of power."
Now that is effeciency.
What I want is a _standard_ battery size. We need interchangeable standard batteries for laptops and gadgets. I once wrote this "petition" text that never really got off, but maybe the idea should be resurrected:
http://www.hanno.de/laptop-petition/
That'll never happen. There's an article in Popular Science (October 2004, "Your Battery Is Dead", not sure if it's available online) that basically proves what most people have known for a long time: Big companies love to screw you by charging inordinate amounts of money for specialized batteries. To quote the article:
Here, for instance, is our favorite Frequently Unanswered Question (FUQ): Why is there an utter lack of standardization in battery shapes, sizes and chargers? Manufacturers will tell you that it has to do with efficient design. Maybe. Richard Doherty of Envisioneering has a darker take:
"Twelve years ago there was an effort by Duracell with all the laptop makers to make a series of universal rechargeable bateries," he says. "Fell on its face -- PC makers found that selling a variety of batteries is more profitable."
There ARE awesome batteries available. Ultralife batteries makes a line of military grade batteries. I believe they use them to power all those electronic gizmos soldiers wear that you always see on tv. Things like night vision goggles and cameras and radios. These batteries are awesome. You can probably run a laptop for a whole day on one of them. But they are crazy crazy expensive.
http://www.ultralifebatteries.com/market-display.asp?ID=7
Personally I would like to see an underpowered laptop with longer battery life. I want a small screen, slow cpu, small drive, little bit of ram. All I need is gaim, thunderbird, firefox, a text editor and some wireless. Maybe mplayer and xmms too. Nothing fancy. But everyone keeps making the laptops faster to go along with the better batteries.
"3. Posted Jan 19, 2005, 2:20 PM ET by Andrew Heller
someone needs to invent wireless power outlets. is that possible?"
I remember watching documentary about early experiments into this.
Using a "mast" that emmitted a high level of static electricity, hey managed to power a light-bulb that was not connected with wires, over quite a reasonable distance.
The main problem with this "technology" is that it's very difficult to turn things off, without complicated insulation techniques. Also, now that we use "chips" I think interference would be another difficult hurdle.
the 'hydrogen economy' while totally 100% bogus in automotive applications has some merit in regards to portable electronics. a hydrogen fuel cell in many instances where a device is meant to be *portable* as in... no where near a power outlet for a 3-4 hour recharge cycle... a fuel cell option would make a ton of sense. if you had a home reformer where you could fill a couple packs up before you leave and know you can get 8 hours of laptop use of them... i'm sure a ton of people would be down for that. less likely to be keen on the idea of 'portable device filling stations' though. combined with the previously mentioned (and previously reported by engadget) mini turbines... i think batteries could legitimately be replaced at some point in time. though i'm not sure if i would actually want to use my laptop ... like on my actual lap with a canister of hydrogen and a micro turbine in it.
If all you want to do is write an article or blog or crank out some e-mails, AlphaSmart products are worth checking into. I got the Dana and the Neo. Dana has about 25 hours of battery life, and the Neo has about 700 hours. Great machines with great keyboards. The Dana runs on Palm OS, and the Neo can beam documents to a Palm OS handheld. You could beam text to your Treo 650 and blog from pretty much anywhere.
These products are obviously not for everyone, but what they do do, they do very well.
few changes to make better battery life in laptops
the two biggest factors are screen brightness (turn it down) and hard drive plenty of ram can cache the filesystem, meaning less disk access (and you might want avoid or be carefull with journaling filesystem, unless you run windows in which case, a software crash is not unlikely)
if your into unix, rig it so the os runs out of ram. dont use
a special vga mode (in linux) and use the console instead of
X11 unless you need it. damnsmalllinux can fit within ram on most newer notebooks. (just boot with toram) that can fit on a hard drive partition so you can leave the rest for long term storage.
or, if your brave and/or have plenty of ram, turn off virtual memmory. well behaved software should be able to treat a malloc failure gracefully anyway. (too bad most dont)
p.s. can mplayer really count as a light application?
Japan will see fuel cell powered mobiles in 2007:
http://pukupi.com/blog/blog.php?id=200410060922
some notebooks do have good battery life
fujitsu P2120
especially with extened battery and drive bay battery, (see other post) with some tweaks to slackware, i get better than the 12 hour stated battery life.
sharp zaurus sl-6000
11 hours on lowest backlight setting, (but only 3-4 hours with wifi) sometimes you can use it with the backlight off. it has a sled wich is supposed to give an extra 2x battery life.
rhino 120
(frs(wakie talkie)/gps) easily goes all day of use as well with rechargable 2500mA batterys. its not a laptop, but its functionality is similar to a pda, which is why mention it. radio (like wifi or gsm) eats alot of battery life.
sony U3 is supposed to have similar battery life to fujitsu.
apperantly battery life simply isnt a factor most people look at when buying a notebook. shame.
The Ultralife batteries referenced above are not rechargeable (i.e., not lithium ION), rather they are "primary" batteries (i.e., lithium). In fact current cell phone and laptop lithium ion batteries are about as good as current rechargeable battery technology will be for quite some time, for these "low rate" applications at least. The 8% per year estimate is principally gained from packaging improvements to the batteries; the fundamental materials and properties of LiIon batteries have not changed in years and are unlikely to change for many more. The chemistry is not changing. The biggest downside to current laptop & cell phone batteries is that if improperly constructed, they can explode. Hence the value of buying name-brand replacement cellphone and laptop batteries.
That'll never happen. There's an article in Popular Science (October 2004, "Your Battery Is Dead", not sure if it's available online) that basically proves what most people have known for a long time: Big companies love to screw you by charging inordinate amounts of money for specialized batteries. To quote the article:
Here, for instance, is our favorite Frequently Unanswered Question (FUQ): Why is there an utter lack of standardization in battery shapes, sizes and chargers? Manufacturers will tell you that it has to do with efficient design. Maybe. Richard Doherty of Envisioneering has a darker take:
"Twelve years ago there was an effort by Duracell with all the laptop makers to make a series of universal rechargeable bateries," he says. "Fell on its face -- PC makers found that selling a variety of batteries is more profitable."
How come Nintendo can make a battery that will last 10 hours in their handheld and Sony's does not last more than 3 hrs?
Nintendo is that renegade manufacturer that strips out everything unnecessary in order to offer a portable game system with extremely long battery life while Sony fills their system with trivial and non-essential "features" that really do nothing more than suck battery.
When did Thomas Malthus become a tech consultant?
Dude, this is just irresponsible design. My EOS Digital Rebel, for example, gets 600 shots on a single charge, because IT DOESN'T WASTE POWER UNNECESSARILY! Whereas your average shitticam gets far less SPC because it has the LCD and all the electronics on all the time. Why can't we do something that good with phones? Like maybe a phone that only watches the network when a call comes through? Or a laptop that shuts down nonfuctioning parts of the mainboard?
in response to #22:
Sony's PSP only lasts about 3 hours due to its UMD, which has to spin up and be read. The DS uses carts, which use next to no power. The UMD, however, stores 10x the data (at least), and is quite a bit cheaper.