Boston-Power unveils long-lasting "Sonata" laptop battery

Following through on its promise, upstart Boston-Power has taken the wraps off its much-hyped laptop battery, now officially known as "Sonata," showing off the new-and-improved lithium-ion technology at the DEMO 07 conference that's rolled into Palm Desert, California this week. The company's also taken the opportunity to add some more specificity to its claims, boasting that the Sonata battery will last the life of your laptop and charge faster than any other batteries on the market, filling up to eighty percent capacity in just half an hour -- not to mention be less likely to explode. What's more, the battery will apparently not require any design changes on the part of laptop manufacturers, with HP already working with the company in the testing and validation process -- and presumably set to be one of the first to offer the battery. Not surprisingly, you can also expect the battery to come in at a premium price compared to traditional laptop batteries, although the company isn't saying exactly how much more they'll run. We should find out soon enough, however, with the first laptops using Sonata batteries expected to ship sometime this summer.

Read - Boston-Power Press Release
Read - CNET, "Start-up to launch safer notebook battery"

[nuguns101 @ Jan 30th 2007 8:10PM]

It's great that it has a small charging time, but personally a bigger factor (at least or me) is the battery life of this thing (will last the life of your laptop?), which they fail to mention at least on this engadget snippet). I know they can't really give definite numbers on something like a laptop battery life, but they don't even give any comparisons. Whatev.

[Kenundrum @ Jan 30th 2007 8:39PM]

You mention HP... but the batteries shown are actually IBM Thinkpad T4x/R5x series batteries in the pictures... hooray for the Thinkpad faithful!

[Chuckles McGee @ Jan 30th 2007 9:20PM]

They don't even bothering giving the energy density of the battery, which would really, really help people figure out the improvement in battery life, given that the new battery is X times more energy dense than current lithium-ion/polymer technologies.

My guess is that the battery isn't any longer-lasting in terms of charge capacity, only in number of charge cycles.

[Andrew Fong @ Jan 30th 2007 11:19PM]

But if our laptop batteries don't lose half their capacity every 10 months, how will laptop makers bilk us out of our hard-earned cash with battery replacements?

[Zeke @ Jan 30th 2007 11:20PM]

I can picture the Dell order customization website upgrade already...
"Make this battery less likely to explode (add $49)"

[Paul McNamara @ Feb 1st 2007 5:22PM]

More here about Boston-Power's debut at DEMO ... and it's impressive CEO.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/11026

[William Y.K. Chan @ Jun 29th 2008 2:38AM]

I am eager to find Lithium Ion batteries with much enhanced chemical properties.

[laptop @ Aug 20th 2008 10:21PM]

It is cool.