Charge your phone in less than what it takes to shower: the great challenge of modern technology
Smartphones are a wonderful technology, but they have an important handicap: the battery. We still depend on a plug to use them, although less and less time is plugged in. The goal now is that you can recharge your mobile without your noticing: while you take a shower, or what you prepare dinner … Can you get it?
A cell phone battery lasted one day ten years ago … the same as now. It seems that we have not advanced anything, but the reality is very different. Modern smartphones are hundreds of times more powerful than before, so modern batteries may last the same, but they store much more charge than a few years ago. Today’s battle is not in autonomy but recharge speed. If we manage to recharge the mobile in 10 minutes, it will no longer matter so much that its autonomy is one day or less. Are we near or far from this figure?
Today, most manufacturers focus their efforts on fast loading. It is true that some, such as Oukitel and its mobile phones with a battery of 10,000 mAh, are committed to increasing capacity. Even Samsung is animated with the Galaxy M30s and its 6,000 mAh battery. But the current capacity of the batteries faces two almost impassable barriers: the small size of the mobiles, and the materials used to manufacture them, which are already squeezed to the fullest. Little else can be taken out.
If the size and thickness of the mobiles will continue to decrease, as long as a new type of battery is not invented, the autonomy will not improve much, because the mobiles are increasingly powerful. The only aspect that can be improved is the reload speed. And they are working on that. Both with and without cable, by wireless charging.
A few years ago recharging a mobile cost 3 or 4 hours. This was an important handicap if you ran out of battery in the middle of the day because the recharge lasted forever. So most users recharged the mobile at night.
Now modern mobiles take just over an hour. The most advanced can do it in just half an hour. And we see progress day by day. What does it take for us to recharge a mobile in ten minutes? Let’s check it out.
The impassable wall of autonomy
The first batteries of mobile phones, before becoming smartphones, lasted several days. This was because the mobile phone was only used to call or send text messages. With the birth of the smartphone, they became small computers with high power and consumption, and autonomy fell to a day or less. And there we have stayed …
Why mobile autonomy has not evolved with technology? Because the evolution of technology plays against him.
New types of battery … that do not finish arriving
Experts agree that the autonomy of batteries will only increase dramatically if batteries are invented with other types of materials. And they are in it.
There are quite exotic attempts. We have recently learned that the first carbon dioxide battery that works has been created. They had been around for a long time, but they broke down quickly after a few refills, due to the accumulation of carbon in the catalyst. However, researchers from the University of Illinois, in Chicago, have introduced new materials, specifically molybdenum disulfide in the cathode catalyst, which allows the battery to be recharged 500 times without damage.
The truth about miraculous batteries
To understand the point where we are, you have to know some important things about batteries. No one doubts that carbon dioxide or gold nanoparticles work better than lithium. Or that the niobium oxide is charged in 6 minutes, and graphene in less than 30 minutes. It sure is true.
But these improvements, by themselves, do not solve the key problem: are those batteries marketable?
Fast charging in 2020
While the new types of batteries come true, the only thing that manufacturers can do, for now, is to improve the fast charge. And the advances have been spectacular in the last two years.
Today there are numerous fast charging systems, from Qualcomm Quick Charge to Oppo SupeerVOOC, and others. What the quick charge does is, as the name implies, recharge the battery faster. This is achieved by increasing the load power, either with more amps, or more voltage, or a combination of both. Not all phones accept fast charging, they must be prepared for it.
So, recharge in what a shower lasts, yes or no?
As we have seen, both Vivo and Xiaomi have presented chargers at more than 100W that recharge a 4,000 mAh mobile phone in less than 15 minutes, although they are not yet for sale. And Samsung’s presumed graphene batteries will do the same.
Everything indicates that in a matter of months, possibly already in 2020, we will have the first rechargeable batteries in 15 minutes. It is not a utopia.
From then on the autonomy of mobile phones will be losing importance, because we can recharge them almost without realizing it, in which we have coffee.
Now, the term mobile phone takes its true meaning. The tyranny of the cable is about to end. Or at least it will be reduced to the minimum expression …