Battery life improvements inevitable for future mobiles
Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - 10:10:17
Mobile phones and other battery-powered devices like laptop computers, will benefit from improved charging and energy usage techniques, which will allow for more efficient operation and longer periods between recharging sessions, according to scientists.
Research carried out in the US, suggests that in the future our mobile phones will be able to go for weeks rather than days without having to be plugged in and juiced up. With most people using smartphones, it can sometimes feel like charging is a never ending chore, but scientific advances should help to avoid these issues.
The most significant aspect of this new research is that it does not involve a total change in the type of battery technology which modern mobiles use, so improving battery life is based on making changes to the mobile's memory, rather than to the energy-storing hardware.
Smartphones drain the battery because of the inefficient way in which the memory is allocated and used, so scientists are hoping to increase the operational duration by a factor of 100, just by altering the way in which memory is used.
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, researcher Felix Xiong explained that they had been using nanotube technology in order to improve energy efficiency in mobile phones. To put nanotubes in a comprehensible context they are a ten thousandth of the thickness of a human hair.
With people plugging in their phones to charge almost every night after a heavy day of usage the idea of getting a mobile which can keep on operating for weeks or months at a time is very attractive, according to Professor Eric Pop.
The impact of mobiles on the environment is made more significant by shorter battery life and more memory-intensive applications, which are common with modern handsets. As such any improvements to this situation will be beneficial on several levels.
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