As the technology of the smartphone has been dramatically increasing most of us can considered it way more than a cell phone. Instead, these handheld devices are more like small computers, allowing people to do much more than call their families. In fact, i can personally say that throughout the day I use my phone the least to call people. The tradeoffs include, searching the web, access to over thousands off apps, and even taking pictures on your camera. The problem that most people can agree on with the smart phone is the battery life. You can not go a full day without giving your phone an extra charge. The only way
this is possible is to just not even really use the phone at all. However, with technolog
y constantly improving this problem will be sold rather sooner than later.
One solution to this problem is simply a bigger battery. Before the iphone 6, iphones had around a 1500 mAh lithium-ion battery. In other words, 1 mAh produces 1 milliamp of current for 1 hour. With that being said, wouldn’t a 3000 mAH battery produce double the amount of energy? It would but that means the battery is going to be twice as big and heavy, which would create a weird looking iphone. The only solution would be to make the overall phone bigger, but at that point it would seem like an ipad mini.
The Second option to a longer battery life would be to increase the battery energy density. Most phones contain a lithium-ion battery with an energy density of 0.9-2.63 MJ/L. Other types of energy densities are to powerful for handheld devices (check them out here). In the near future I’m sure they will find a energy density around 5 Ml/J, but that would still only increase the battery life by 2.
The last option includes charging your phone while you use it. Maybe every time you type, that energy was converted into energy to charge the phone. Although it is a brilliant idea, its a bust. You wouldn’t receive e
nough energy. Another idea which caught my attention was solar charging. What if their was a phone case that had solar panels attached to it? Well there in fact is one and with direct sunlight facing the phone it will charge within 4 hours. Overall, the future of battery life is within the hands of the scientists. Clearly they are capable of thinking far outside the box.
http://www.wired.com/2014/09/can-increase-smart-phone-battery-life/
Whenever I am out and about, my battery life seems to be empty within a few hours. This blog post made me think of ways of saving my battery life. One thing that I was always fascinated about was whether closing your apps actually gave more battery life. My friends were always amazed that I never closed one app, and they were always left open. So am I wasting my battery life? An Apple Genius, Scotty Loveless, states that, “All of that loading and unloading puts more stress on your device than just leaving it alone.”
Isn’t it kind of sad that we rely so much on our phones? We are all guilty of it. If our phone is dead we feel lost and we have to charge it right away. Older generations say they are worried about us because our social skills are going to be terrible if we rely on talking through devices all the time. This article talks about the effects the obsession with our phones will have later in our lives.
Megan, I noticed the same thing: that phones predating smartphones had longer battery life and longer durability in general. You may be right that since non-smartphones did less, their batteries lasted longer. Another possible explanation is planned obsolescence: phone manufacturers intentionally engineer smartphones and their batteries to only last a certain length of time so that customers have to buy another phone. I learned about this at my cell provider store this summer when I asked why my phone had effectively broken (battery lasted less than four hours, applications randomly shut off, wifi capability broken, etc.). I was told that my iPhone is really only meant to last almost up to a phone contract (so 1.5-2 years) and that by clicking yes to the latest software updates, updates that my phone’s older technology can’t process, my phone’s software was essentially killing itself off. To learn more about planned obsolescence, you can read this article. Also, here is a list of smartphones with the longest battery life.
It is strange to think that before the days of iPhones, (and even before blackberry’s) phone batteries lasted so much longer. Probably because the phone would do so much less than it does now! Now, we have everything on our phones, from cameras to the internet to applications like instagram, and an app to tell us what is available in the commons for lunch. Apps, new software etc. are coming out faster than scientists can develop a longer lasting battery!
I always hear complaints about people saying “my phones almost dead” or “my phone can never hold a charge”. There are a few popular solutions to help charge people’s phones on the go: like purchasing a charging phone case or a portable phone charger. I think it is very interesting that people are coming up with other ways to help charge phones as they are being used, like a phone case with solar panels to consume energy from the sun. It is exciting to see what the future has in store for phones.