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Smartphones have been in our lives for almost two decades and we have seen great improvements in that time. However, one thing has stayed pretty much the same: charging your phone every day. Why hasn’t battery life improved along with everything else?
Larger, higher-resolution screens, powerful processors, smart software features, and faster data speeds are just a few of the improvements over the years. Yet with all those technological advances, I still charge my phone every night like I did in 2009.
RELATED: Is charging your phone all night bad for the battery?
Why is the smartphone battery life still bad?
You could make a pretty strong case that battery life has actually gone down. worse. Before smartphones, mobile phones could last several days on a single charge. Of course, smartphones are much more advanced than those devices, but shouldn’t batteries be advancing as well?
The truth is that the battery life of most smartphones is pretty bad. Unless you’re using a super-mega-ultra model, like the iPhone 14 Pro Max or Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, you’re probably keeping a close eye on your battery level, and maybe even charging before the end of the day.
So what is going on here? It’s actually quite simple when you get down to business. Smartphones have improved faster than batteries. batteries have improved over the years, but the advances are minuscule compared to those made in chips, displays, and other smartphone components.
In fact, the incredible advances in other Smartphone components are what keep battery life in the range of a day. Internal components are shrinking, making room for larger batteries. That’s still the best answer we have to improve battery life: throw more mAh at the problem.
Unfortunately, the batteries found in smartphones today are still based on technology from the 1990s. There were great advances in battery technology in the 1980s and 1990s, but things have stagnated since then. Essentially, we’ve reached the limit of what we can squeeze out of lithium-cobalt batteries.
Will batteries ever get better?
The big question is: will we ever get out of this rut? Everyone is waiting for the next big breakthrough in battery technology, but it never seems to come. I certainly never would have imagined that we would still be charging our phones every day when I got my first one.
There are a couple of things on the horizon to look forward to. The first is called “stacked batteries,” and Samsung reportedly plans to mass-produce them in the future. Stacked batteries are literally multiple sheets of cells stacked on top of each other to achieve higher capacity in the same physical space.
Of course, do not get too many illusions. Stacked batteries only increase capacity by about 10%. A phone with a 5000 mAh battery could house 5500 mAh with stacked battery technology. We also don’t know when Samsung will actually start rolling out this technology, if ever.
Solid-state batteries are another technology that could be a solution. Conventional batteries have two metal electrodes in a liquid electrolytic substance. Ionic particles move between the electrodes when they are charged and discharged.
As the name implies, solid-state batteries are, well, solid. The liquid electrolyte is replaced with a solid piece of metal or alloy. The electrodes and electrolyte can be compressed into layers that can be flatter than a typical liquid-based battery. That means more capacity in the same size package.
A much bigger issue in the world of battery technology is graphene. Graphene is a crystalline lattice of graphite one atom thick. Despite being almost 2D, graphene is an excellent electrical and thermal conductor, while also having a high level of hardness and resistance. Graphene batteries would offer 60% more capacity than lithium-ion batteries of the same size.
Sounds great right? Indeed, graphene is an amazing material, but there are some major hurdles. Graphene is very difficult and expensive to mass produce. It is not feasible to make a smartphone with a graphene battery. Currently, the best we can make are graphene/lithium hybrid batteries, which you can already buy from companies like electetus.
Smartphones simply move at a much higher rate than batteries. Our phones are likely to demand even more power by the time the next battery breakthrough happens. Don’t expect to change your nightly charging routine any time soon. In the meantime, your best bet is to go for the best iPhone or Android phone for battery life, or keep a few portable chargers.
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