The battery that powers our phones has been a bete noire to most users of smartphones. I tis either slow to charge and when it is charged it does not last the length of time that all of us desire. Even with huge capacity batteries and assistance of power-banks we tote along most smartphones struggle to last through a day.
But this was not always the case, remember those early days when phones were bigger, less smarter and had batteries that easily lasted several days on a single charge. While our phones today have vastly more powerful technology behind them, the batteries have not kept up with this progress.
Experts in battery technology say the core of the issue is simple: Moore’s Law has simply outpaced battery technology, meaning that our phones have gotten better — and demanded more power — at a much faster rate than advancements in batteries have.
It is not that no improvements have taken place; we have been able to steadily increase battery power by increasing its energy density and shrinking down internal components. Around five years ago, we reached a stage where new improvements in energy density have capped and any further improvements had to come from changing battery materials. But finding new material is a slow process compared to coming up with engineering advances.
One reason for the lag in technology is that the material we use in most phone batteries are based on lithium cobalt, a battery technology we have been using since the early 1990s, and we have largely reached the limit of how much power we can squeeze out of it.
There is hope for the future. Researchers are already investigating new battery technology, like solid-state batteries, that could open the door to more energy-dense materials that could offer more power for future devices. However, the catch is that, by the time we develop new battery material, the power hunger of our smartphones would also have increased, leaving us right where we started off, complaining about the poor quality of batteries.
