Researchers working on 10x more efficient cellphone batteries

Emil

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The École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, in Switzerland, is working on making gadgets 10 times more efficient when in use, and almost eliminating energy consumption when idle. The project is called Steeper, after the novel transistors it is focusing on, which get their name because of the abrupt change they exhibit when switching between on and off states.

This inefficiency contributes to the growing amount of energy lost when gadgets and household appliances are put into standby mode. The plan is to use nanotechnology to "close" up the leaky transistors. Research on the new transistors is still under way, with a prototype expected to be ready sometime in 2015. If the research teams succeed in their aim of making such devices, they would use far less power than existing transistor designs which typically leak energy even when supposedly turned off.

Like a leaky faucet, today's transistors are never fully closed even when they're off. "It's old technology," Professor Adrian Ionescu from the school's Nanolab told The New York Times. "What we want to use is nanoscience and nanowires, so when you want to close it, you do close it. Our vision is to share this research to enable manufacturers to build the Holy Grail in electronics, a computer that utilizes negligible energy when it's in sleep mode, which we call the zero-watt PC."

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This would be HUGE. I know my storm battery is worthless. I even purchased the extended battery and it's not that much better. Not to mention extending this to Laptops and other portable devices. I can't wait for something like this in 1-3 years.
 
My HTC Desire has pretty cool battery life, even given that it uses an always on connection, and I never turn wireless off either. I still get around 2 days before needing to charge it. :)

Thats considerably better than my previous iPhone 3GS that barely lasted a day if I was lucky!
 
15 hr battery for moderate phone users would be great! so im only asking 2x or 3x what's now. can we have that then you guys can go for 10x? :)
 
I hardly ever put my computer into sleep mode anyway... I just shut it down. It never works right coming back from sleep mode anyway. Although I'm sure this tech will be useful in other ways... not really cell phone batteries...
 
I wonder if it gonna make a big difference for people that have their laptops on most of the time. This probably wont affect the user who play game... His battery will probably drain as fast while gaming =/
 
I always kinda thought battery technology was lagging behind other technologies. We will see what happens when it comes out though.
 
Demons said:
I hardly ever put my computer into sleep mode anyway... I just shut it down. It never works right coming back from sleep mode anyway. Although I'm sure this tech will be useful in other ways... not really cell phone batteries...

The one thing I do notice on waking my computer from sleep vs starting it up from being off is that my Core Temp shows that the computer is running about 10 C hotter vs if I reboot it.
 
"I hardly ever put my computer into sleep mode anyway... I just shut it down. It never works right coming back from sleep mode anyway. Although I'm sure this tech will be useful in other ways... not really cell phone batteries... "

So you turn off your cellphone everytime you put it in your pocket? This would be great for cell phones, as they are in sleep mode %70 of the time (whenever its locked and in your pocket/whatever).
 
God, this is the hundredth time we've heard of new technology that's going to improve batter life. They're all ideas so far. Nano-This, Carbon-That, Graphene-Those. Let's get cracking people. This is the main thing holding us back in so many fields, including Mobile Phones and Electric Vehicles for starters.
 
I was just talking to my girlfriend that we will either have to find other energy supplies with these devices or make them last longer.... Good to see this article the day after talking about it so I can show it to her. She didnt really think there was a problem with today current battery technology. When cell phones die in one day... how can this really be very useful in a portable device. They should last for at least a week without being huge clunkers... "should" being the key word...
 
This is certainly great news especially for people like me who spend more time using devices than charge them. i need my phones and laptop on for long unfortunately it's so difficult to get good batteris for long hour operations.
 
I hardly ever put my computer into sleep mode anyway... I just shut it down. It never works right coming back from sleep mode anyway. Although I'm sure this tech will be useful in other ways... not really cell phone batteries...
Other than an occasional failure to detect the mouse from time ro time, I have little to no trouble in waking my machines from S-3 sleep. It's possible you have other problems causing this. You really shouldn't have to reboot constantly, although Windows does in fact, like to be restarted from time to time.
 
I loved them before i even read this article. If successful and globally adopted, this could bring in an energy efficient age.
 
i would love to have just 3x the battery life in my moto droid overclocked to 1000Mhz my battery gos dead in like 5 hours with moderate use.
 
Thats good news! I always complain about batteries loosing their charge.... especially for my PSP battery. I don't know why but its charge is lost completely in a matter of idle days, and I need to charge it again each time configuring first time PSP start-up settings.
 
This is nice. The battery life in devices today are horrible. The only reason we don't complain more is because we've gotten used to it. All kinds of tech are moving to the new generation, except battery tech.. I would personally like my Android phone's battery to last at least 3 days of use, 1 day (at most).. But, I guess we'll have to wait a while for that still
 
it's about time they did something with regards to batteries, especially with all the technology in smartphones today.

and whilst they're at it, can they do something for laptop batteries too? Li-ion are great, but they aren't so great when 1 day you switch on, boot up and you get a prompt on-screen telling you your battery capacity is below 38% which means it is useless. it won't charge up anymore. and it costs you nearly a quarter of the price of the laptop itself to buy a replacement..
 
Battery technology has always been the weak link in our mobile devices. A decade ago, a Lithium-Ion battery could power up your monochrome or 1st generation color screen phone for a week or two. Today, mobile phones use high-resolution touch screens and a multitude of connectivity options and background programs. It's no wonder that phone batteries often last less than a day of full use. I hope they can speed up this new technology but we have heard such promises before. Oh well, just have to live with " Low Batt " for at least the next 5 years :(
 
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