Student's tech promises 12x the battery life in your iPhone, BlackBerry
By Laura June 
posted December 19th 2008 8:12AM
posted December 19th 2008 8:12AM
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. 
sadly i dont know anything about electrical engineering.
coincidentally i just had to write an O(nlog(n)) sorting algorithm using a singly linked list. however, i dont have an engineering background.
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.
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
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
WooT! Go Carleton! Go Ravens!
It'd be a shame if one of those icicles broke off and impaled him...
In Engadget's defense, the article they link to says the same thing. Except they say "up to" 12x.
"Huge breakthrough in tiny module Atif Shamim’s wireless connector can extend the battery life of devices like the iPhone and BlackBerry by up to 12 times."
*sigh* that was in response to hydrogen_wv.. I'm a tool...
"he estimates" pretty much says it all....
Somebody asked "why hasn't some giant technology corporation discovered this?". Having worked for several technology corporations as both a technician, and later as an engineer, I heard the reason in meetings in response to new ideas: "Why isn't one of our competitors doing this?". Contrary to the breathless press writeup emanating from industry, big and medium corporations are lucky to get any innovation out the door. Managers want to bet on sure things that they can guarantee will make it to market and make big bucks. Imitating your competitors is far, far cheaper than "wasting time on projects that will fail". I once read an article about 10 years ago that said only 1 in 100 ideas makes it to market. In recent years, the corporate emphasis has been on less "time-wasting" and more multi-tasking. Creativity requires both thinking and collaboration. When you are staring off into space, thinking, there is no outward motion, and managers often think movement means productivity. Collaboration with peers stimulates idea formation, and laughter enhances social interactions, further stimulating ideas, yet many managers think these types of interactions are just wasting time. If only 1 idea in 100 makes it to market in the most innovative organizations, and management pressure is to minimize the activities that generate ideas, how would a giant or medium technology come up with such a thing? More to the point, after reading the comments on this post, haw would such an idea even make it to the stage of being tested, since corporate decision making processes are more brutal than the commenters here?
Sounds like 12x power savings FOR THAT COMPONENT. Which does not equal a battery that lasts 12x longer in your phone.
Since I've actually done an interview with Shamim, let me set a few things straight:
The entire thing is designed so that there is a small wireless antenna installed to jump the signal from one part of the chip to another where the main antenna is located, in turn bypassing what can now be considered unneeded components. The reason the power consumption of the device decreases is because the circuit's new configuration to accommodate this internal wireless antenna allows for the removal of several previously required components that were huge power suckers (such as buffer amplifiers), and in turn this decreases the size and manufacturing cost of the transmitter package.
He came up with this idea when no one else did because he was working on both the circuit and the antenna at the same time to create a more efficient transmitter package for monitoring radiology treatments for cancer patients - the industry typically has two different people working on the two parts independently and therefore didn't even think to try and construct the entire thing at once to make it more efficient.
Mx2000 had it right on the money: no it will not increase the battery life of the iPhone by 12x, that estimate was a figure of the power consumption of the package itself - he estimates that it uses maybe 1/12 of the power it used to (though this is only a fraction of the total power consumed by the wireless device). But that only relates to WiFi activities - talking on the phone or browsing the net - if you're listening to music or watching video on your iPhone, this does nothing to help your battery life. This research wasn't even designed with the iPhone in mind as the primary target, that's just what the media has latched onto.
Read on for a more in-depth interview: http://www.charlatan.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21087&Itemid=148
Hurray anechoic chamber (from picture)! Its definitely an interesting idea and I'm sure Shamim will be a rich, rich man if he plays his cards right.
I'll believe it when I see it... just like flying cars and all the other empty tech promises.
I have a Certificate of Completion from some seminar I took at the Holiday Inn in Erwin.
This idea will not increase battery life by a factor of 12.
If this is as good as it seems, then this would be about the only thing that would make me upgrade to the next iPhone.