Student's tech promises 12x the battery life in your iPhone, BlackBerry

Feeling the hurt of endlessly dying batteries on your BlackBerry (or iPhone, if that's what you're into)? Atif Shamim, a PhD student at Canada's Carleton University might have the medicine for that pain of yours. He's cleverly hacked such devices, removing all the wires that connect the electrical circuits to the antenna, and developed a module for the connection to operate wirelessly. The result, he estimates, is that his modified devices use almost 12 times less power than they normally do -- which of course means longer battery life. A paper about the device has won an award at the European Wireless Technology Conference, and Shamin has filed for a patent in both the US and Canada. There's no indication of when we might start to see tech like this on actual commercial devices, but we're pretty sure plenty of companies are going to want to get a hold of this technology like, yesterday.

[Eddie @ Dec 19th 2008 8:17AM]

I am an undergraduate electrical and electronic student and it is pretty much my dream to make some sort of breakthrough like this. What a legend. I hope it is effective and works its way into our devices.

[j_g_puff @ Dec 19th 2008 8:49AM]

I am a postgraduate electrical and electronic student and it is pretty much my dream to manipulate the aspirations of naive undergraduates such that they obey my nefarious commands. I hope that this is effective and that you make me a coffee.

[hung @ Dec 19th 2008 9:08AM]

wait... maybe im not understanding right, he replaced the wired portions of the device, and turned it wireless? understanding the physics of bluetooth and w-lan, i concluded tat the baterry use would increade, yes?

[Ben @ Dec 19th 2008 9:36AM]

I'm a successful business owner and C- student who dropped out of school and hope to manipulate undergrads and postgrads alike to work for me to make me more money with their inventions.

[benhc911 @ Dec 19th 2008 9:59AM]

I go to the University of Ottawa, which shares the same beautiful city of Ottawa with Carleton... And one of my roommates takes aerospace engineering at Carleton... When he first told me that one of his peers had found such a solution I had two thoughts immediately and one later... and shortly thereafter I lost the game for no apparent reason.

The first thought, how did a random student find something that huge technology companies havent found? (I know that this is kind of a naive statement on my part, as many things are invented out of the blue that later seem like common sense... and young minds are often the best for this because they have less preconceptions and are better equipped to innovate).

The second was a largely disbelief. As a chemical engineering student, I may not be directly educate to understand this situation, but many of the thought processes are similar... But I still have a hard time understanding how a wireless transmission (even on such a small scale) would be more efficient then wired. My only thought is that on that small of a scale, the wired components are so poorly insulated that there is a relatively large loss... But It is not my field so perhaps I am entirely mistaken.

My third (delayed) thought, was that of pride. For Canada, for Ottawa Universities, for students... etc. A breakthrough like this has the potential to drastically impact the technology world, good on him, and if he makes millions, he deserves it. Battery life has always been the main focus of my gadget fetish... combine advances like this with new battery tech and I'm in heaven.

Ohhhhhh and sorry about the game thing... my roommate and I always spontaneously lose it when we talk =\

[Verythrax @ Dec 19th 2008 8:19AM]

So, he made an antenna for the device communicate with the antenna?

... huh...

[Sheldon @ Dec 19th 2008 8:55AM]

Yes, he has done *exactly* that.

(For the people to lazy to read the original article rather than Engadget's "sexed-up" headline:)
He found the power requirements to drive the signal from the main chip to the antennae could be reduced by a factor of 12x by replacing them with a micro-transmitter/receiver system. Now, the antennae is still powered in the same way it was before and the micro-"antennae" also runs off the same battery but that simple wire link that is no longer required does reduce power consumption.
Unfortunately, you won't get 12x battery life on your phone. The power requirements for the wires that links the chips to the main antennae are going to be relatively small when compared to the power required to actually power the LCD or even the main antennae itself!

[Jeff @ Dec 19th 2008 11:34AM]

Seems like you'd only see the 12x power reduction if the main antenna was being powered externally....

and seems like the same thing would apply if you created a wireless connection to an externally powered anything (LCD, or Wifi, or Bluetooth, etc) ...so what am i missing here? where's the breakthrough?

[Tracy in Cary @ Dec 19th 2008 3:00PM]

Name of the idiot responsible: Sarah Schmidt, Canwest News Service

Engadget just copied the headline from her article. She is the one that translated "one small component will consume 1/12 the power" into "battery will last 12 times longer".

[solu @ Dec 19th 2008 3:35PM]

Engadget authors often lose scientific breakthrough stories in translation, and almost always overstate (presumably unintentionally) the benefits of these "breakthroughs". This ridiculous story reminds me of the one about wind turbines that claimed wind turbine efficiency was greatly improved by making them smaller and attaching them together with a CARBON FIBER POLE...(fyu wind turbine efficiency decreases as they get smaller, and the pole which connects them.. well what the heck does a pole have to do with anything!) Engadget is ok for gadgets, but they fail hard at science.

[Ari Moshe @ Dec 21st 2008 4:14AM]

If you look at the actual paper, you'll notice the total claimed power savings is about 35mW. If such a savings was realized, this might improve the standby life of the phone (when the screen is off and the CPU usage is low). However the power usage of the screen backlight, and of the CPU usage during actual usage of the phone the saved 35mW will be relatively insignificant. Also, if i read the paper correctly, with the proposed power savings comes a 60% reduction in range. In no way could this technique ever result in a 12x reduction on total power usage of a 12x increase in battery life.

[Michael LaFramboise @ Dec 19th 2008 8:21AM]

blah blah blah

to sum it all up, put it on the store shelves or stfu and gtfo.

How much of these "breakthoughts" and promises have we seen in the last decade?

Somehow they all make alot of noise for a week or two and then disappear completely and no-one ever hears about them again while the battery life in our devices remains pathetic year after year...

[Verythrax @ Dec 19th 2008 8:24AM]

Sad but true.

If at least ONE of those "improved battery life" that popped last year were implemented, our cellphones power should last at least 3 times longer.

[j_g_puff @ Dec 19th 2008 8:53AM]

Well, battery performance has improved a lot in the last 10 years. Unfortunately, the power consumption of our increasing advanced devices has also increased at a similar rate, resulting in a net improvement of 'not much'.

Whack a modern battery into a 10 year old phone and you'll be impressed.

[Damien @ Dec 19th 2008 12:10PM]

Relax man, maybe you cannot figure out a breakthrough like this, but done get your panties in a bunch that there is news about possible new tech. I mean come on you are reading engadget, what else do you expect to be reading about!

[Verythrax @ Dec 19th 2008 11:28AM]

Yeah, but's not that we are talking about. We are talking about the astounishing number of battery solutions "discovered" in the last year or couple of years, and still news of anything coming to the market.

[bondsbw @ Dec 19th 2008 11:29AM]

j_g_puff, I guess the same can be said about all areas of tech. They push the limits in CPU speeds, memory, disk capacity, bandwidth... but you only experience a little of that. Most of those improvements get you bloated--but better--operating systems, TVs, consoles, servers, games, and apps by trading efficiency for maintainability and reuse.

The market accepts that... people would rather double the usefulness and reliability of a system than gain an extra 5 seconds of boot time for a computer or load time for a console game. I would rather have better phone download speeds than an extra day of battery life, since I only need to charge every night or two anyway.

[ch4s3r @ Dec 19th 2008 8:21AM]

So would the antenna that communicates with the towers need a battery of its own?

[PyRo1509 @ Dec 19th 2008 8:38AM]

Think of it like walkie talkies running off the grid power..

The old way is like telephones. To get your phone call from you to your friend.. your phone needs power.. the giant switching building needs power, the HQ needs power, the next switch needs power then to your friends house who needs power.

Or you could just use the walkie talkies which means only your houses need power.

Remember, you take 90% efficiency for everything.. It only takes about 25 times before you can find that 12x increase. My guess is in a phone theres atleast 25 components in there.

[Tony C @ Dec 19th 2008 8:22AM]

Not sure how just improving the power efficiency to the antenna will save 12 times the battery time, but hey if it works, I'm all for it! I just know that I won't see it in my iPhone 3G since it's a hardware fix. :o(

[Macdelaney @ Dec 19th 2008 8:26AM]

neither in a Blackberry Storm ;)

[uttles @ Dec 19th 2008 10:38AM]

Yeah, I'm thinking you will get more battery life *while talking* but that's it. If you're google mapping, or emailing, or mp3ing, etc, the thing's going to drain just like normal.

[wmmguru @ Dec 19th 2008 8:32AM]

This History, OMG... this is history

[tom @ Dec 19th 2008 10:33AM]

history in the making?

[iEye #2 @ Dec 19th 2008 8:33AM]

It is basically just a miniaturized relay... that makes the interconnections to the RX antennae when needed.


Then WTF was the airplane mode for?

[anantha92 @ Dec 19th 2008 8:35AM]

Of course battery life has gotten better, although the phones and tech we use today draw alot more electricity!

[Professor STFU @ Dec 19th 2008 8:39AM]

I'm calling bullsh*t. Copper transmits electricity alot better than any wireless medium. Being a EEE graduate, I can't see how this is possible.

[Professor STFU @ Dec 19th 2008 8:59AM]

For a reality check, assume the only part of a phone that uses power was the GSM communications subsystem. Then assume that this new guys system makes the GSM subsystem 100% efficient (practically impossible, but for arguments sake). Given a fixed capacity battery, calculate the original efficiency of the system with his '12 x battery life' claim. It's pretty obvious that this is a case of terrible journalism [likely], or even worse research [possible].

Remember the gravity lamp? (http://pesn.com/2008/02/19/9500471_Gravity_Lamp/) It even received an award, it must be real!

background reading: http://dansdata.blogsome.com/2008/03/03/stop-press-pixie-dust-unsuitable-for-household-lighting/

[KarlW @ Dec 19th 2008 9:02AM]

An an EEE graduate myself, I'm also a little confused. That said, the findings speak for themselves. No doubt they'll be up for serious scrutiny by companies looking to buy the patent.

Apple has $25Bn in the bank collecting dust and interest. This seems like a worthy investment for a small fraction of that, if the results haven't been misinterpreted and the benefits hold up in a variety of mobile scenarios.

[Alan Strangis @ Dec 19th 2008 9:52AM]

I'm an EEE graduate too, since I sold mine to get an Aspire One.

[Miguel Marrero @ Dec 19th 2008 10:50AM]

As an EEE graduate you should know the physics that are in play when transmitting "microwave level" frequencies through a cable and signal loss. This is why cell towers and related equipment use waveguides to get the signal from the transmitter to the antenna.

[Professor STFU @ Dec 19th 2008 1:50PM]

This is over mm's, not meters. Controlled impedance lines are not the cause of losses on the scale - which is what this guy is implying.

[Professor STFU @ Dec 19th 2008 1:51PM]

*this

[superhobo @ Dec 21st 2008 11:53AM]

Did you take the microwave electronics class? I did, it was hellish.
A simple thing as connecting from point A to B becomes a huge calculation exercise.
Really sucks.

[Mx2000 @ Dec 19th 2008 8:40AM]

The headline is wrong (its also wrong in the linked press release), it won't increase the battery life of your iPhone 12-fold.

Quote:
"He estimates his module consumes 12 times less power than the traditional, wired-transmitter module. It is also much simpler in design, lowering the overall cost of any hand-held device, he said."

So we're talkin' about the radio transmitter only. It's still pretty significant...

[urbanpeasant @ Dec 19th 2008 8:44AM]

This is how it's going down. I'm going to take out all my arteries, but not my veins, blood's gotta back somehow yo, and have my heart send my blood out using this same tech, to all my limbs and what not. That way, I'm more energy effecient, yah feel me? And since I won't need to sleep (I just added that in, but it sounds good, yah feel me?) I can get a second job. And then with all that cash money I can buy more psychedelic mushrooms! Cuz I already ate a bunch. So like, you guys gonna give me a record deal or what?

[John @ Dec 19th 2008 8:46AM]

?hnnunnh? How about this - take the idea one step further but removing the connections between the device and the battery too. Some loss of functionality, but a massive increase in battery life...

[Peter Zich @ Dec 19th 2008 8:48AM]

Wait. Connecting the parts wirelessly uses less power? Isn't there a loss of strength from it traveling over the air?

[Wayne @ Dec 19th 2008 8:52AM]

"12 times less"? How about something arithmetically correct? "Twelfth" maybe? Okay, no, maybe 8%? Splitting hairs, I know, but still...

[j_g_puff @ Dec 19th 2008 9:01AM]

Presumably you are now crying because of your horrible comment-related mishap.

[Brian @ Dec 19th 2008 9:30AM]

You will never see the 12x increase because big battery will purchase the rights and hide the design in the same secret cave that houses the 100 mpg carburator and 100% efficiant solar panal, and Kennedy assisnation tapes.

[Dorf @ Dec 19th 2008 11:00AM]

Hehe.. big battery.. those bastards!

[hydrogen_wv @ Dec 19th 2008 9:33AM]

It's nice how engadget puts their own twist on headlines to make their headlines more attractive. I'm smart enough to figure out that this won't improve battery life 12-fold, and after reading the story it's even more obvious.

Engadget, Quit 'exaggerating' your headlines to get page views. You've lost what little credibility you've ever had.


Not as many people may have paid attention to this headline if it said "Student's tech provides significant increase in battery life", but at least you wouldn't be lying to your readers... *cough*

[ace587 @ Dec 19th 2008 9:37AM]

though im not complaining about my blackberry battery life, it could sure use some extra juice during extended trips

[Scott Miller @ Dec 19th 2008 9:42AM]

I'm not complaining about ANY phone, but it would be nice to NEVER have to charge them again.

[charlieboy @ Dec 19th 2008 9:40AM]

Why did I think of that?!!! I hate my life, all my ideas come to me in my dreams and by the time I am up i forgot half of it. Hmmm maybe if i could hack my DVR to record my dreams between the 12AM to 7AM time slot..... So crazy that it just might work, brilliant!

[Dee @ Dec 19th 2008 9:43AM]

I wonder what the reliability ratio from having a wireless connected circuit is to having a wired one. Sure it would use less juice to have the micro-antennas in your circuit but I would prefer to have a solid wired connection if it meant it would be more reliable.

[uttles @ Dec 19th 2008 10:38AM]

So, after reading the full article, one glaring problem seems to have been ignored: interference.

If you're communicating wirelessly between the "brain" of the phone and the antenna, doesn't that open the door for external electronic interference to affect the quality of the call?

And in reverse, the tin-foil-hat type people are going to have a lot more "evidence" for the whole cell-phone-cancer myth as they could claim the microtransmitter interferes with your brain.

[Funkyheff @ Dec 19th 2008 10:44AM]

I'm not saying its not possible, i'm sure the paper has passed peer review, i just don't understand this. The argument is that you have to power x components between the processor output and the antenna, and those are being removed. But you would have the same set of components before the "microantenna" right? And the signal will have to at least be gained up when it hits the main antenna..i guess I don't see how this is more efficient than taking whatever signal was going to your microantenna, and using two copper wires to run that to wherever you were receiving that at the main antenna. Anyone see the actual paper? Couldn't find a link in the article

[John Blankenau @ Dec 19th 2008 12:21PM]

Hey, Mr. Funky-stuff. I think the 12x reduction in power is just applied to the power that is consumed in going from RF to antenna....not full system power...its still a good thing but not to the crazy extent that seems to be implies....any way, read the full paper from Mr. Sharifi here: http://www.mwjournal.com/2008/EuMW/PDF/euwitbestpaper.pdf