Tech News : Hydrogen battery tech gives the iPhone 6 week-long battery life

[BandOfBrothers]

Tech News : Hydrogen battery tech gives the iPhone 6 week-long battery life.

My Thoughts : This write up shows what can be achievable in the not too distant future if this piece of Tech makes it to the wild. Just think a week before having to charge a phone !

Excerpt from the piece " New hydrogen battery technology developed by British firm Intelligent Energy allows the iPhone 6 to run for a whole week in between charges. The company is rumored to be working closely with Apple to move the technology forward.
Intelligent Energy’s iPhone 6 prototype looks just like a normal iPhone 6, with the only cosmetic difference being small vents in its back that allow an imperceptible amount of water vapor to escape. But unlike a regular iPhone 6, this one can last a full week on just one charge.
That’s thanks to technology that creates electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen. The device is powered by hydrogen “fuel cell” cartridges that are inserted into its headphone jack, and according to Intelligent Energy, this is the world’s first iPhone with a built in fuel cell system" Source : iphonehacks.

Just maybe this dreaded phone status bar battery icon will be a thing of the past. 

[hrym]

There are several interesting battery developments in the pipeline at the moment (though there's usually something "on the horizon" all the time).   As well as this, someone's apparently having good results with aluminium electrodes (got, I think the anode, working, now attempting the cathode).   Long life, quick charging, low rate of decay.  

The boss of Motorola was recently quoted as saying we need an advance in battery technolgy and this applies to electric vehicles even more than phones.   A battery that doesn't use (relatively) scarce heavy metals, degrades as little as possible, has a good life betwen charges and doesn't weigh - perhaps literally - a ton is pretty much the Holy Grail.

It's possible that energy conversion is a better method of storage than capacitance and it's certainly more efficient to transport.  In that case, hydrogen itself is promising as you can make it (by electrolysis) close to the power source and, when you pipe it to the point of delivery, the transmission losses are massively less than for long-distance cables.   It's a lot less scary in use that we sometimes imagine, too.  I've seen it suggested it's safer than petrol.

Apart from anything else, refuelling a battery-powered electric car take 4-8 hours, against 5-10 minutes for a petrol one.  So, for the same number of vehicles, you need at least 24 times (and maybe 96) as many recharge points as petrol pumps.

Phones and portable devices require much less power (of course), so will probably see any advances in battery technology sooner.