News has come through from Phones Review this morning, about Korean engineers’ efforts to give the world of mobile phones better batteries. Like, substantially better.
We’re talking mobile phones with double the battery life. Just imagine something like a Nokia N96 lasting for about 3 weeks between charging!
Now, we’ve seen mobile phones with stupidly long battery lives before, with the ZJ268 Chinese thing, which had a battery that could nearly hit 2 years. But that was done by putting a HUGE battery into the mobile phone, with about 32 times the capacity of normal batteries. Which, presumably, meant it weighed about the same as the Ural Mountains…
However, what budding battery boffins in Korea have done is not whack huge, big, heavy batteries into mobile phones, but instead, change what’s in ‘em. The way batteries work is by having two electrodes (think pointy bits) in an electrolyte (fluidy paste stuff they poke into), and Korean scientists have hit upon a way to get more power, more efficiently, from smaller Li-ion batteries, like the ones found in mobile phones, mp3 players, laptops and the like.
Basically, you change the electrodes from carbon (in the form of graphite) to porous silicon particles (made by mixing up silica with hydrogen fluoride to do something probably incredibly technical), which don’t swell up like normal silicon does, when it touches lithium. All of that is needlessly technical to try and understand, so I’ll break it down. Silicon, instead of carbon = same size battery, much more efficient and a much longer life.
Which means that mobile phones would become much longer-lasting, without actually getting any heavier. Sure, there are technical obstacles to work out. And I really would like to be assured whether the hydrogen fluoride is used in the battery itself, or only in making it, and if it IS in the battery itself, they need to make sure it doesn’t come into contact with water.
Otherwise then, it becomes hydrofluoric acid. Which is nasty, nasty, nasty, evil, horrible, corrosive, toxic, devilish stuff, far, far worse than battery acid.
Apart from that, could be awesome. Imagine a tiny, lightweight mobile phone you don’t have to charge for a month!
As long as they can prove it won’t dissolve your face…
It may not have a battery life of a month, but it’s an incredible phone AND it won’t dissolve your face! Grab yourself the stunning Nokia N96 today!