You love your laptop. You take it virtually everywhere with you. You work with it, play games on it, and live out your social media life through it. Unfortunately, it can only give you an average 8 hours of standard battery life (more likely 4 hours if you use it for gaming) before you need to hunt for the nearest power outlet. Well, that’s about to change.
If Apple could have their way with fuel cell powered mobile devices, your Macbook Air would not only be smaller and thinner, it would also be up and running for weeks without recharging. If Sony succeeds in current bio battery developments, when you see your Sony gadgets’ battery levels indicating low power, you just feed them scraps of paper and they’re good to go. This is the future of battery power – renewable, eco-friendly, and of course longer lasting.
Apple and Sony are positioning themselves right at the starting line for a battery race that is simply inevitable. There are too many mobile devices out there, and many more will be manufactured and delivered to eager consumers. Right now manufacturers may be trying to trounce each other with attached camera capabilities or processing power and speed, but sooner or later they’ll all have to take the right step backwards and take a look at the batteries powering their devices – just as Apple and Sony are currently doing.
There is a slew of resources on the Web that offer helpful tips on prolonging the battery lives of beloved gadgets. Battery life in terms of talk time is an important facet of any smartphone these days. It’s painfully evident – the need for better batteries to power the myriad mobile devices dominating consumer electronics is not just an auxiliary demand anymore, it’s a priority.
Even Bill Gates is onto it. He recently backed (as in invested in and funded) a startup company that is researching ‘big batteries’ – bad boys that can store the energy derived from renewable and eco-friendly sources like solar panels and wind turbines. The ‘big battery’ idea solves a perpetual problem in eco-friendly energy sources: they almost always have to be used immediately. Gates’ perspective on the issue is spot on: “renewable energy resources…will never approach the scale or affordability that is necessary.” Big batteries might just be the ideal solution.
Translate that to apply for mobile devices, and you get a demand for better, longer-lasting batteries that are practical and eco-friendly. Not five years from now, you can expect a new line of gadgets that can last days on end on one charge. You can expect them not just from Apple and Sony, but from almost all other technology and players and movers in the industry, because the battery race will soon begin.
These corporate giants indeed know what their consumers will be asking for next. After all, better batteries in their gadgets afford them the power of technology and the Web at their fingertips – for longer.
