Hey.
What are the biggest limitations on improving today’s battery technologies?
In: Technology
The issue is not technological it’s about what consumer want. Batteries improved by a lot over the last couple of decade, but that doesn’t mean that a month lasting cell would sell.
Let say that you have a battery of a specific size and power. Technology improve and now you can make your battery twice as efficient. As a manufacturer you have mainly three decision you can make with that improve battery.
1) You can decrease the size of your battery so your phone is smaller.
2) You can keep the size, but now your battery can keep more energy in it so the phone will last for longer.
3) You can keep the battery size, but add a more powerful computer in your phone. It will use more power, but since your battery have more energy your phone will last the same time before needing recharge.
So now what do you think would sell more? Yes it’s nice to have to recharge less your phone, but does it really matter that much to the consumer? Most people will be able to charge their phone in their car or at home everyday. So as long as your phone can last 1-2 days, the consumer don’t really care that much.
What they care more is if the phone is easy to keep in their pocket and if you have more capability to play games, have apps, better internet, etc.
The point is that a phone with a computer twice as powerful will sell more than a phone with twice the duration on their battery. So that’s what company do. No matter how much battery improve, they will just add more stuff on it to appeal to the consumer and keep the duration of the battery roughly at the same point of 1-2 day in-between recharge. Because that’s what consumer want to pay for.
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